会玩旅行 (Hui Wan Lv Xing) offers a marketplace for tour groups to find Chinese-speaking driver/guide outside China. Currently, this service covers more than 1,000 cities in the world, helping Chinese tourists to enjoy their tour destinations without worrying about language problems. Booking is possible even just one day before departure.
The company was founded in 2014. The Whois and Wayback Machine records suggest that the company registered the domain name 59HW.com as their corporate site — a very low-cost solution.
Now, let’s look at the domain name. 59 rhymes with 我就 and WH with 会玩. As a whole, the phrase makes sense, meaning “I’ll be having fun”. It’s targeting consumers and is related to travel. So, the meaning matches the nature of the company’s business.
But, the domain name does not exactly match the company’s name. 59 is not found in the company’s name, nor in any tag line. Only the second part HW matches the first two characters of the company’s name.
When consumers hear the company’s Chinese name, they’ll likely try HWLX.com or even HuiWanLvXing.com. It’ll be difficult for consumers to guess that the domain name is actually 59HW.com.
I think HWLX.com would be a much better domain name for the company. Currently, HWLX.com shows a landing page managed by eName, so I hope the company will try to negotiate to purchase the domain name.
You made me buy 3 domain for me, my wife and my daughter 🙂 GoDaddy will thank you for this post…
I hope they will become valuable assets to keep in your family. I’ve paid a lot of money to Godaddy on domain names but unfortunately they have never rewarded me for that.