At an early time, 11-02-1996
the National Touristboard,
at the time called "Maison de la France"
registered the domain France Guide.com
choosing the word "guide"
as a marketing keyword.

By February 1996 only one "Visit" domain was
registered in California
The domain Visit France.com
was probably not registered shortly after "France Guide.com"
during the year 1996 or 1997
Data of the very first registration is lost,
the domain was lost by it's first owner
registered for a second time or even a third time 15-01-2004.

Visit France.com was for sale for many years
switching from one domain agency to another.
The price kept going up.

Atout France created in 2009 never realised
that Visit is becoming a global trend
replacing "Guide" by a new branding "Explore"
(most international tourist are not familiar with).

The last listing price for Visit France.com was 350.000 usd
08-05-2026 the domain was aquired in a private sale
by Marcus Cent, a web pioneer
from Glasgow, Scotland

In France many smaller Tourist boards
initially used the format ot-city.com / ot-city.fr
OT, being an acronym of Office de Tourisme
as much as CVB / VB
is the english acronym
for Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Some French Tourist Boards use the OT-city.com format
others formats like city-tourisme.com / city-tourisme.fr
tourisme-city.com
not realising the "-" hyphen sign
in a website is "mobile unfriendly".

Before the turn of the century the editor of this website
had the chance to talk to Steve Jobs
who explained him his idea of removing
hyphens from a future mobile keybord.
Since the 2007 iphone launch
websites-with-hyphens.com start to "look" outdated

In France
.com is significantly more popular than .fr
partly due to the fact
that .fr was overprotected during the early internet years
thus pushing the development of .com



2008 The Destination Management Organisation
of the Southern French Department Var
was the first one
to upgrade it's internet adress
from TourismeVar.com
Visit Var.com.



2018 Poitiers adopted the Visit Style
rgeistering the domain, both .com and .fr
21-06-18
valuable Visit Bregenz.com domain.
The domain was difficult to get
and the story behind the domain
is interesting








The "Visit Phenomenon" started during
the early years of the Internet
between California, Britain and Paris.
1995 the first Visit Site came alive in California,
soon followed by other destinations where Internet was born.

A global fashion was launched
Visit+[destination].com

.
Check out the different "Visit" sites !
Which one do you prefer ?

Please contact us
if you edit a beautiful "visit" site
missing on the Global Visit List.