BERMUDA.COM owner Tony Brannon is in negotiations to sell the web site domain to a mystery buyer for what is understood to be a seven-figure sum.

Mr. Brannon, who bought the domain two years ago for a price he described as "close to half a million dollars", has attracted large amounts of advertising through the site, providing links to hotels, retailers, media outlets and many other organisations on the island.

The site's success has seen the bermuda.com domain boom in value and now Mr. Brannon estimates its value at between three and four million dollars.

Mr. Brannon, a well-known businessman and musician, made the revelation yesterday in response to a call from guesthouse owner Michael Ashton for the Bermuda Government to buy bermuda.com as it is the most obvious name for potential tourists to look for on the web.

"What I would really like to see is for the Government to buy the bermuda.com web site," said Mr. Ashton, who runs the Granaway Guesthouse in Warwick with his wife Carol.

"That name should be a portal for Bermuda. It could be a place to post special deals, cheap air ticket offers and provide links to all the hotels and retailers.

"Even if they had to pay two or three million dollars for it, that would be chicken feed, compared to the benefits the island could reap. Why not do it properly and plough some real money into it?"

Carol Ashton founded the bermudamall.com web site, which recently won an award as the best Bermuda portal on the Internet (the Ashtons are featured in Business People on page 12).

Mr. Brannon said yesterday that he had already offered the domain name to the Government.

"I offered bermuda.com to the Government within the last year and they made a formal response," said Mr. Brannon. " They told me that 'Bermuda Government is not in a position to buy bermuda.com at this time'.

"There are a lot of people who say the Government should own bermuda.com and, of course, it would make a lot of sense. They could use it as a portal for their e-commerce, tourism and all sorts of services.

"Having said that, I am a believer that Tourism should be privatised, run as a business instead of run by Government.

"I've had no luck with the Department of Tourism. They wanted to do a link swap, but they seemed to think I should give it away to them. This is a business and major portals we are talking about, so I obviously wasn't going to give it away.

"And from my point of view, the Government could own it. But obviously they'd have to pay for it. I am now in negotiations to sell bermuda.com, but I can't say who with - and it's not Bermuda Government."

Mr. Brannon added that bermuda.com already provided numerous links to hotels on the island at a time when an increasingly computer-literate world was doing more business on line than ever before. And island tourism was already benefiting from that.

He cited the St. George's Club and Oleander Cycles as two local businesses that had enjoyed attracting large amounts of custom via their bermuda.com web links.

The domain bermuda.com was first registered in 1995 and Mr. Brannon purchased it five years later. He also owns a host of other domain names featuring Bermuda, such as bermudatennis.com, bermudaweddings.com, bermudashopping.com and bermudagolfing.com.

"I bought bermuda.com because it was a natural business extension of what I was doing with advertising," said Mr. Brannon. "At first I needed a bit of convincing because of the price tag, but now it generates a large amount of advertising dollars.

"And since I started running it, I would estimate that 99 per cent of advertisers have renewed with us."