Why are people investing in new top level domains?

Ok. So domains have been much unchanged since the beginning. Well at least in respect to the 3 majors; .com, .org ,.net. Then there are some well established new-er TLD's i.e. .fr, .de, .co.uk etc... Now people (opportunists) want a domain like:

somewhere.holiday

why?

If your SEO and your link backs point to a site which offers value then domain is surely pointless?

If so, why are investors excited by such dns choices?