voyage.ntann.ru was the website of Voyage, a tourism information service — a Nizhny Novgorod industry portal about travel and leisure that operated from 2003 to 2006. The header of the home page announced the site's subject as "ALL ABOUT TOURISM AND LEISURE IN NIZHNY NOVGOROD AND BEYOND"[1], while the service description for search engines listed the subject in more detail: "Information about tourism and leisure, both in Nizhny Novgorod and beyond," including "boarding houses and sanatoriums of Nizhny Novgorod Region and Chuvashia," excursion and bus tours, and cruises[3]. The first archived snapshot of the home page is dated September 2, 2003.

The site lived on a subdomain of ntann.ru — the domain of the Nizhny Novgorod agency NTA, with which Voyage ran joint contests for readers[1]. The footer of the pages carried the notice "Copyright © 1995-2003 IS \"Voyage\"" in 2004 and 2005, and it was updated to "Copyright © 1995-2005" in 2006[3].

What the site looked like

The home page was built around a long vertical menu and three parallel news feeds. In May 2004 the menu consisted of the sections "Home," "News," "Topic of the Week," "Nizhny Novgorod Region," "Nizhny Novgorod," "Guide," "Directory," "Contests," "Polls," "Links," "Tours," "Travel Agencies," "Weather in the World," "Ministry of Economy of the Region," "Leaders of the Travel Business," "News Archive," "Weather," "Partners," and "Advertising"[1]. The feeds were called "International News," "Nizhny Novgorod News," and "Our News" — the last of which reported on the publication itself: the opening of new sections, updates to transport schedules in the "Directory," and contests[1]. In 2004 each item carried a view counter in square brackets: a report on the air traffic control service being found guilty in the crash over Lake Constance had 535 views, while a note on the melting of Arctic ice had four[1]. At the bottom of the page was a "User Login" block with login and password fields and a link to register[1].

The set of sections grew noticeably. By February 2005 the menu had gained "Tour Search," "Humor" (the section opened on January 10, 2005), "Nizhny Novgorod Tourism League," and "Department of International Relations"[2]. By February 2006 the list had been supplemented with "Photo Galleries," "Entertainment," "Jobs in Tourism," "Cultural Nizhny Novgorod," "Committee of International Relations," and "Regional Administration's Department of Tourism"; a fourth feed appeared — "News of Nizhny Novgorod Travel Agencies"[3].

What it offered readers

The commercial section was held by a "Deals of the Day" block. In May 2004 it listed tours with prices: Tunisia (Hammamet, Monastir) from 297 conventional units, Egypt (Hurghada, Sharm el-Sheikh) from 217, the UAE (Dubai) from 271, Turkey (Alanya, Kemer) from 144, boarding houses of the Volga Federal District from 510 rubles a day, and alongside them local destinations: an excursion tour to Murom from 300 rubles and to Diveyevo from 180 rubles[1]. By 2006 the showcase displayed departure dates and amounts in rubles: Nizhny Novgorod Region from 230, Russia from 5,250, the United Kingdom from 11,250, Italy 20,320[3].

Besides tours, the site kept a calendar of memorable dates, announcements of foreign holidays and carnivals, polls ("Where did you spend New Year's?"), a "The Foreign Ministry Is Authorized to Announce" section with visa and diplomatic news, and a weekly "Topic of the Week," launched on April 1, 2004 for "interviews, opinions, and commentary from specialists of the Nizhny Novgorod travel business"[1]. From December 1, 2004, airline ticket booking went live: as the home page announced, visitors gained the ability to "book an airline ticket online to virtually any point on the planet," with the publication calling itself at the time "the leading Nizhny Novgorod tourism portal"[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

Voyage was less a storefront for a single travel agency than an industry platform for the region. It announced and summed up the results of the first Nizhny Novgorod "Miss Tourism 2004" contest, in which employees of travel agencies from Nizhny Novgorod and the region took part, reported on the third tourism festival "Time to Rest in Russia" and on the Russian paintball championship among travel companies[1]. In 2006 the site published the results of the governor's prize contest "Leaders of the Nizhny Novgorod Tourism Industry 2005," and an appeal from the regional Ministry for the Support and Development of Small Business about trips to Turkey came, according to the editors, directly to "the Voyage tourism information service"[3]. A photo gallery of Bolivia, Peru, and Chile was provided to the site by the Nizhny Novgorod travel agency Komanda-Gorky (Komanda-Gorky)[3].

In the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, the site appears with a score of 511 on Counter.nn.ru. In the voting for the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day in 2004, Voyage received two votes[4]. The industry portal never had a mass audience, but within the Nizhny Novgorod Internet it occupied a rare niche: a daily-updated feed about tourism tied to the city and the region.

How it closed

The last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated February 2, 2006; its fresh material dates to late January-early February 2006, meaning the site was still operating right up to the moment of the capture[3]. The domain voyage.ntann.ru no longer exists today, and no trace of a move to another address has been found.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)