Joburg Tourism has announced that .joburg (dotJoburg) domain names will soon be available, offering an opportunity to create more awareness of Johannesburg-based organisations, venues, tourism products and services, from a destination marketing perspective.
“The .joburg project gives the City of Joburg many possibilities that will help us position the city as a tourist destination of choice for business and leisure”, said Phelisa Mangcu of the City of Joburg. “It aligns with our vision of taking the Joburg brand globally and marketing the city as a world-class African city,” she continued.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) is currently processing around 1 300 new generic Top Level Domains (gTLD) applications. The .joburg application was submitted by the ZA Central Registry (ZACR) alongside the dotAfrica (.africa) dotCapeTown (.capetown) and dotDurban (.durban) applications.
The initial evaluation success of the .joburg application follows that of .durban which passed the same evaluation phase three weeks ago. The applications are considered in the order determined by the prioritisation draw held in Los Angeles on December 17, 2012. The .durban application drew position 303, and passed its initial evaluation in May 2013. Joburg drew 566 and has now just been evaluated. Cape Town, with position 761, has a little more time to wait.
Vika Mpisane, General Manager of ZADNA said it’s fitting that Joburg should have its own domain name that companies and organisations can use to convey a distinct association with the city.
Mangcu said the Joburg metro municipality would receive priority when it came to registering names for their entities and programmes. The South African government will also be given an opportunity to reserve its department and entity names, and names of national interest such as heritage names.
Preparations for the launch of the .joburg namespace are under way following a progress report workshop that ZADNA and ZACR held with the representatives of the three cities on May 31.
“The workshop gave the cities an opportunity to understand first-hand the plans for the launch and operation of the three city TLDs. It also kicked off an iterative consultation process that will allow the cities to influence policy and operation of the three namespaces,” said Mpisane.
