Geo Domain Series Part II – Acapulco.com

The second part in our series on Geodomain Investment and Development comes to us from Michael Castello, CEO of the Castello Cities Internet Network (or CCIN). Michael and his brother David founded CCIN more than 10 years ago to consolidate the successes of their geodomain properties such as PalmSprings.com, Nashville.com and of course, the topic of today’s post, Acapulco.com.

After reaching out to the Castello brothers via their CCIN website, Michael was generous enough to post his comments directly on our intro post to the series earlier in the week, sharing his experience over the years with one of their favorite and most successful geo-brands, Acapulco.com:

“I think it’s great that you are taking the time to write about the industry, especially the Geo space. I remember the first time I registered Acapulco.com in early 1995 and wondered what it would be like to create a virtual city on the World Wide Web.

I created as much as I could from California knowing that I would have to eventually travel there to get a true feel for its beaches and people. I licensed some great pictures for the initial pages that consisted of hotel, dining, weather, activities and of course the Cliff Divers of Acapulco. I would also visit books stores and buy as many interesting books on the city in order to become knowledgeable so I could place the content that visitors were expecting to find. The smartest thing was placing feedback@acapulco.com on all the pages. I soon found what most visitors were looking for. There was no spam back then. It was clean conversation!

The Hurricane of 1997 took the wind out of our sails since there was so much bad press regarding deaths and destruction. Most people were fearful that the water was not clean and did not travel there. It took nearly three years to get the city and site back to being a desired travel destination. Mexico spent nearly 2 billion dollars to help make Acapulco the jet set city it once enjoyed.

My brother David and I finally traveled to Acapulco and were able to connect with Ramon Lujan who was the Convention Center and Visitors Bureau director. Ramon has been working with us and Acapulco.com ever since and was awarded the Best International City GeoDomain Award in 2008.

We travel to Acapulco twice a year and love the bay, its people and nightlife. There are some of the best night clubs in the world overlooking the bay. Acapulco.com is one of my favorite city sites and it currently has surpassed visitors from the US with more Spanish tourists visiting our many non-English pages. It truly is an International city web success story and something David and I take great pride in.”

Thank you Michael for sharing your insights with all of us, success stories like these are a source of inspiration for many of us in the geodomain space, especially for those of us looking ahead to the development of our own networks of geo brands in the future!

(Read Part I in the Series | Read Part III in the Series)

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