“Many years ago, like many search engine focused marketers, we marketed our hotel product through many different domain names that we owned or partnered with. We always wanted to build a singular brand and move away from search, and we had been looking for good name for at least a year.

“Agoda was one of the names we came across that was available in multiple languages and for sale online. We liked it because it sounded a lot a lot like a slang for “I’ve got to go” as in “I got ‘Agoda’ Tokyo this weekend.

With so many different nationalities inside our business speaking English to each other with different accents, we had a good laugh about that and eventually settled on the name. It didn’t hurt that it was only five letters, relatively easy to pronounce, started with the letter A, and sounded Asian because of the similarity with Pagoda.

“As with all things we do, we also tested the name with real customers and received good response. We then worked with creative talent to create a more clear brand identity. It all came together over a period of about six months and we never looked back.”

– Robert Rosenstein, CEO & Co-founder, Agoda

“We had created a list of around 50-60 different potential names. All names on that list had one thing in common: the dotcom domain name for each was available, that was the primary criteria by which a name made it onto the list. 

“One afternoon, I thought up the name, “Cleartrip”, and added it to the list. The more time “Cleartrip” spent on the list, the more it stood above and apart from every other name on the list. The founders discussed the name and we decided to go ahead with it as the name.”

– Hrush Bhatt, Founder & Director, Product & Strategy, Cleartrip

 “We actually never used a professional agency for this but instead thought of a long-list of names (TravelRaja, TravelPlay, IndiaTrip etc etc) ourselves (the few of us on an all-night session). Then we narrowed down to approximately five names and did a dip-stick with 100 odd folks to see their reaction to each name.

“While we were clear we needed a generic name for SEO benefit, we also did not want to restrict ourselves to an India play (in fact that’s why the original name of INdiaAhoy was not used for our main site). MakeMyTrip made everyone smile and happy and that decided it for us.

“Oh, and also, we did not want to buy an expensive name (this was around June 2000) so by and large went for domains that were available.”

– Deep Kaira, Founder & CEO, MakeMyTrip

“CC Zhuang, the other co-founder, came up with the name. Douglas Khoo is the third co-founder.

“We started with “woqunar” ( where am I going today? ) because we never thought “qunar” could really be available. Surprisingly, “qunar” was indeed available.

“We also considered ziraffa and giraffa, ie a play on giraffe. The idea was to have an animal of some sort.

“We started with a Chinese name so we never really cared about translation into English. Qunar though seems to be easy for foreigners to remember.

“The real objective is to get a Chinese name that is suitable, unique, easy to remember and consistent with your brand. I think the key to translating into Chinese is to be locally relevant. I would suggest all companies to throw out the idea of translating and simply come up with a great, local name.

“China is a big enough and unique enough market to justify a standalone brand, name and strategy.”

– Fritz Demopoulos, Co-Founder, Former CEO, Qunar

 “Like a lot of online business start-ups in 2005, we were faced with limited domain name options and limited budget to buy an existing domain.

It was very popular at the time for start-ips to make up names or register misspellings. I remember working from home and feeling very frustrated that all the best domains were taken – it was driving me crazy – and that’s how Bezurk popped into my head. Bezurk is a misspelling for the word “Berserk” which means crazy.

“We were crazy to think that Bezurk would resonate with consumers, The association of Crazy with Travel was madness. There are over five ways of spelling Berserk so it was a miracle that travellers found us. You needed to be dyslexic to find us.

“In 2007 we had a naming competition amongst our staff and every name possible was listed on our office white board. Everyone’s creative thinking was at the point of exhaustion when we came up with Wego. We wanted to have a name which was short, easy to spell, had few misspellings, and related to travel. We tried every permutation of the words Travel & Go.

“It was when were combining different words like ” I Go”, “You Go” that “We Go” was born

“When we typed the word Wego into Google, we came across the company who owned the domain. They were a software company who did not know what to do with the domain so were realistic on the asking price. They had not used it so the domain was clean. As it turned out they had only decided to sell the domain a few days before we found it. So it was meant to be.”

– Craig Hewett, Chief Commercial Officer & Co-Founder, Wego

 “Yatra – means “journey” in Hindi. We must have gone through a hundred names before settling on this. When we finally settled on this, we realized that someone in the US owned the URL and we had to go out and buy it – cost us, I think, about $40,000 which when you are not funded is a lot of money, but in hindsight has turned out to be one of the best decisions as the name, given its familiarity and common usage, has given us tremendous brand recall despite investing lower amounts in brand building than competition.”

– Dhruv Shringi, CEO & Co-Founder, Yatra

 “Even though the name Zuji has no meaning in itself, the Asian sounding name was chosen to highlight being an Asian insider embracing innovation and efficiency. In some markets, the name sounds like “footprint” in the Chinese language; which connotes “journey or travels”.” 

– Wong Kok Kit, Chief Financial Officer and who was on the founding team of ZUJI

Want to share your stories of how your travel start-up got its name? Contact us.