When it comes to big business, it might be time to start looking at the global travel booking industry. With revenue estimated to reach approximately $820 billion by 2020, one company is bridging the gap between travel and blockchain technology. Travala, formerly known as Concierge, launched in 2017 with the idea to incorporate blockchain into this multi-billion dollar market, comparing itself to popular online booking services like Kayak and Expedia.
About Travala
Travala has a platform which makes booking travel easy. In addition to standard fiat payment options like PayPal for the West, and WeChatPay in the East, Travala accepts many digital assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple, to name a few.
With more than 500K properties across 210 countries, their three-year goal is to complete 174,000 bookings and 1.5 million participating properties by 2019. According to their site, they’ve already built up to a 30% return rate of customers and have already developed strategic partnerships with multiple travel suppliers like hotelbeds.
In addition to the booking platform, they have launched the AVA token which is available on a couple of exchanges and currently boasts three trading pairs on KuCoin.
Incentivizing Travel
While the idea behind rewarding users for completing simple tasks is not unique, Travala has launched their own incentivization program to reward their members for tasks like booking, referrals, and writing honest reviews. Visit their site and you will notice a standard 2% giveback in AVA for booking on their site. Their hope is to put cryptocurrency into more people’s hands and organically grow an enjoyable, interactive booking experience.
According to their 2019 Q1 announcement, their roadmap consisted of developing the Travala platform wallet for payments and easy distribution of rewards; developing more strategic partnerships in the booking space as well as making AVA available on crypto exchanges. They’ve also launched a crowdfunding campaign to help accelerate the growth of the platform. At the time of this report, Travala has raised 128% of its target for their crowdfund, which ends in April 2019.
Travala’s 2019 Q2 plans include a beta launch of their marketplace, API integration with their travel partnerships, developing B2B partnerships for corporate bookings, increasing their social media outreach, and event collaborations to be the premier online destination for accommodations.
Time to Book
For crypto-enthusiasts, Travala is an option that proves blockchain is making gains in the traditional marketplace.
For technophobes and newbies to cryptocurrency, this is a great way to book accommodations and earn crypto just for traveling like you normally would.
Travala is showing real world results on how traditional marketplace and digital technologies can coexist and compliment each other for more efficient back end support, streamlined operations, and savings to the bottom line.
The future is bright and that vacation destination looks really good right about now.
