travelnn.boom.ru was a Nizhny Novgorod reference site about tourism that called itself the "Tourist Catalog of the city of N.NOVGOROD"[1]. It occupied a third-level address in the boom.ru domain and gathered in one place Nizhny Novgorod travel agencies and hotels, a review of prices for foreign tours, and information for those traveling abroad[1]. In the nn.ru site catalog the project was listed under the heading "Projects: Tourism" with the description: "Travel agencies of Nizhny Novgorod, prices, hotels. Countries — useful information about the countries of the world: history, traditions, photographs, etc. Guidebooks. Addresses of foreign embassies. Visas, passports…"[4]. The first snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated March 6, 2001[1], the last — November 15, 2004[7].

What the site looked like

The home page was arranged as a navigation sheet: on the left, blocks "For your notice," "News from travel agencies," and "Counters," in the main part — headings, duplicated below by a general menu[1]. The "For Tourists" section led to lists "Travel agencies of the city of N.Novgorod" (original spelling), "Hotels of the city of N.Novgorod," "Press," "Airlines," and to the "TOURS+PRICES" section — as the home page put it, this was a "Review of prices for popular foreign tours"[1]. Package tours were divided into foreign tourism, tours around Russia, and last-minute deals[1].

The reference section repeated a set typical of tourism portals of the time: "Countries" with history, traditions, and photographs, official sites of foreign embassies in the Russian Federation and their addresses, a section on visas and passports — "everything you need to know about obtaining visas: types of visas, documents required to obtain them, terms of processing," exchange rates of national currencies[1]. The "Useful" and "Interesting" block consisted of external links: "The largest hotel database worldwide," "Russian Tourist Network," weather around the world, maps of countries, "Nonstop Notes with Dmitry Krylov," as well as "Web design" and "Advertising on the internet"[1]. There was no address, phone number, or owner's name on the home page — the contact function was performed only by "[ Add ]" links[1].

How the catalog set out to populate itself

A separate "For Travel Agencies" section invited firms to enter data themselves: registration on the site, advertising, as well as forms for last-minute deals, tours, and visa and passport offers — each with an "[ Add ]" link[1]. The editorial part, meanwhile, barely moved. In the "For your notice" block hung two announcements — about the 8th Moscow International Exhibition "Travel and Tourism" MITT'2001, scheduled for March 28–31, 2001, and about Aeroflot beginning construction of the Sheremetyevo-3 terminal; in "News from travel agencies" — the single message about the opening of a new site by the tour operator "Delfin"[1].

The snapshots from January and September 2002 word for word repeat the March 2001 snapshot, along with the already-past announcement of the spring exhibition and the "© 2001" copyright notice[2][3]. That is, for more than a year and a half the catalog's home page was not updated.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was listed in the nn.ru catalog and took part in the Counter.nn.ru ranking. In the snapshot of the "Tourism" heading from April 25, 2002, its rating was 25.33, while the leader of the heading — "Store of Last-Minute Deals. Nizhny Novgorod" — had a rating of 317.78[4]. At the same time, by click-throughs from the directory the catalog held a high position: in the list of popular resources for the same day it ranked fourteenth with 501 click-throughs, slightly behind the computer firm "Aprel-Servis" with 515 click-throughs[5]. In the September 2002 snapshot the rating had grown to 62[6]. More on how these figures are built — in the article on the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

No votes for the site were recorded in our data at the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day; the domain travelnn.boom.ru does not appear in the surviving table of 2004 voting results[8].

How it closed

Judging by the web archive, the catalog stopped developing as early as 2002, and the last snapshot of the home page dates to November 15, 2004[7]. Today the address travelnn.boom.ru does not open: according to the liveness check performed for our census of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, the domain no longer exists. The niche the catalog occupied — a consolidated directory of Nizhny Novgorod travel agencies and hotels with prices — passed by the mid-2000s to the sites of the travel agencies themselves and to sections of city portals.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — "Projects: Tourism" heading of the nn.ru catalog, 2002 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Popular resources of the nn.ru directory, 2002 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — "Projects: Tourism" heading of the nn.ru catalog, sorted by check date, 2002 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)