rosinka.com was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod travel agency Rosinka (LLC "ROSINKA"), which sold tours and rail and air tickets in Nizhny Novgorod. The earliest snapshot of the domain in the web archive is dated 5 July 2002[1], and the agency was already listed in the nn.ru site directory in 2003, in the "Travel agencies" section[2]. Over the years the firm's offices operated on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street, Monchegorskaya Street, Korolenko Street, and Oktyabrya Avenue[4][5]. The latest substantive snapshot of the home page in our collection is from 19 March 2017[6]; by May 2024 the address was serving a registrar notice about the domain registration having expired[7].

Early version: 2002

The earliest archived snapshot shows not the site itself but a splash screen: the page was titled "ROSINKA — Tourism, Recreation, Travel" and offered the visitor either to skip the intro or follow a link to the main page, with the caveat "Unfortunately, your browser does not support JavaScript"[1]. A sense of that era's content is given by the description in the same page's service fields: the agency offered "all kinds of tours" — from exotic destinations (Nepal, Tibet, India, Thailand, Morocco, "the depths of the Amazon and the pyramids of Mexico") to resorts in Spain, Italy, Egypt, Turkey, the UAE, Tunisia, and Bulgaria, sightseeing programs across France, Austria, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, and the Czech Republic, as well as children's holidays both within Russia (Anapa, Sochi, Gelendzhik) and abroad (Crimea, Bulgaria, Turkey, Slovakia)[1].

What the site looked like in the 2010s

By 2011 the site had become a large catalog. The home page title read "Holidays and tours from Nizhny Novgorod, Rosinka travel agency," the horizontal menu consisted of the sections "Home — For Tourists — For Agencies — Corporate — About Us — Partners — Vacancies — Contacts," and the sidebar was extensive: railway ticket booking, special offers and last-minute tours, a tour search across all countries and resorts of the world, and a separate "Tour search by resorts of Russia, Ukraine, and Abkhazia," blocks for "ABKHAZIA," "Krasnodar Krai," and "CRIMEA" with prices for 2011, a "Departures from Nizhny Novgorod" block, a line "Nizhny Novgorod Region" in the "Recreation and Treatment" section, and catalogs of countries, hotels, visas, and maps[4]. The contact block listed a round-the-clock number, 415-63-13, and three offices: (831) 439-73-30 — 71A Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street; (831) 294-77-77 (multi-line) — 12 Monchegorskaya Street, building 1; (831) 297-83-56 — 18 Oktyabrya Avenue; the email address was bonus1@mts-nn.ru[4]. The same page offered "Credit for your holiday!": "Loan amount from 1,000 rubles. Loan term from 1-24 months"[4]. The news feed was active: on 23 May 2011 the opening of sales for sightseeing tours to Saint Petersburg was announced, on 16 June an increased commission for agencies for the whole season, on 1 September a "Get a GIFT" promotion, on 13 September the start of sales for New Year and Christmas tours[4].

By 2013 the top menu had become shorter and more utilitarian — "Home, For Agencies, Departures from NN, Tours, Rail, Air, Cruise, Hotels, Contacts" — but new sections appeared that were not directly related to selling package tours: "Find a travel companion," "Top-100 female travel companions," and "Top-100 male travel companions"[5]. By this time the "Nizhny Novgorod Oblast" block had split into "Sanatoriums," "Recreation centers," and "Country clubs"[5]. The address list also changed: instead of Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, the contacts now listed an office at 29 Korolenko Street, office 102, phone (831) 412-99-42[5]. The news, meanwhile, was already stale: in the snapshot from 14 June 2013, the most recent entry was dated 31 October 2012 — the opening of sales for New Year and Christmas tours[5].

The 2017 snapshot shows a site that was still being partially updated. Sections for resort destinations carried the year's mark: Abkhazia and Crimea had "Excursions 2017," "Prices 2017," "Online booking 2017," and "Choose a resort 2017"; Krasnodar Krai had "Prices 2017" and "Online booking 2017"; children's holidays and the Caucasian Mineral Waters had "Choose a resort 2017" and online booking[6]. A general section "Holidays in RUSSIA and the CIS" appeared with a list: Abkhazia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Uzbekistan, Estonia — Ukraine was no longer in this list, although the line "Tour search by resorts of Russia, Ukraine, and Abkhazia" remained on the page[6]. The Korolenko office had disappeared from the contacts: what remained was 18 Oktyabrya (in this snapshot the address is written as "Oktyabrya St.," while in the 2011 and 2013 snapshots it was "Oktyabrya Ave.") and 12 Monchegorskaya, building 1[4][5][6]. And the news feed had stopped by 2017: the last entries were dated 2014 — 1 March, about an open vacancy; 1 May, about a unified ticket for overland travel to Crimea; 26 May, about the block program for summer; 2 June — "(gold) 27th place in Russia by the sum of places across 3 categories of financial and business performance," where the firm described itself as "a modern travel agency focused primarily on quality and style of customer service"[6]. The footer notice — "© 2009, ROSINKA LLC (831) 294-77-77" and the requirement of a mandatory hyperlink when using materials — remained unchanged across all three snapshots, 2011, 2013, and 2017[4][5][6].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod The Internet

The site appears in two regional metrics of the time. In the nn.ru site directory, where the regional counter Counter.nn.ru reading was printed next to the listing, Rosinka stood in the branch "Firms (Enterprises): Tourism, Hotels, Boarding Houses: Travel Agencies" under counter number 10441 with a value of 275 — the fifth line out of eighteen sites in the category as of 30 July 2003[2]. What exactly that number meant, the directory did not explain: the category leader, "Last-Minute Deals Shop," had 1440, and the bottom line had 7[2]. The directory filled the listing with a description taken from the site itself — the same comma-separated list ("offers, you, to relax, see, the world, all kinds, of tours...") that on the site itself sat in the service keywords field[1][2]. The counter was regional, so mere presence in its directory is evidence that the site was considered part of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet; our Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating is built on data from this counter.

On the final voting results page of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, saved on 26 December 2004, the domain appears twice — in two different categories and under two different names. In "Best Corporate Site" it is listed as "Rosinka Travel Agency" and received no votes at all: zero by email and zero by SMS, line 81 out of 97[3]. In "Most Useful Site" the same address is listed as "Rosinka Travel Company" and collected 8 votes by email against zero by SMS — line 25 out of 48[3]. The scale of the voting is shown by the leader of that same category, the site "Nizhny Novgorod Autoforum.nnov.ru": 212 votes by email and 36 by SMS[3].

How it closed

Our collection has no snapshots of the home page with content later than March 2017[6]. A copy from 23 May 2024 shows not the agency's site but a service page from the registrar RU-CENTER: "The registration period for the domain rosinka.com has expired," stating that renewal had to be paid for by 10 July 2024, "or the domain will be released and become available for anyone to register"[7]. What this meant for the firm itself is not visible from our materials: since 2025 the address has been serving a contentless parking page, and it is possible the domain is now held by a different owner.

Links

  • Wikidata (Q13643663 — entry in the free knowledge base)

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page splash screen, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Travel agencies", 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting results , 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2011 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2013 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, 2017 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Domain page, 2024 (archive)