Crypto Adoption Boosts Travel: Travala Rises From The Ashes
Travala.com, the leading crypto-friendly travel platform, reported an “explosive growth” during the third quarter of 2021, and the use of cryptocurrencies played the main role. Its blockchain-based platform allows customers to realize payments in over 50 digital coins.
CEO Juan Otero stated back in July that 70% of the bookings were being paid by digital coins, getting to see over $1 million gains every week. He also commented that
With more people holding cryptocurrencies and more businesses accepting it for real-world things, travel is naturally a desirable experience to use crypto,
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Travala partnered with Viator, the company owned by Tripadvisor, and Expedia Group -even though Expedia does not directly accept payments by bitcoin-. By these partnerships alone they offer over 700,000 hotels and accommodations and 400,000 bookable activities that can be purchased with cryptocurrencies.
Otero had stated earlier that “Travala.com offers over 3 million travel products, making us not just the biggest crypto-friendly [online travel agency], but one of the largest overall.”
In hotel bookings alone, 75% of them were paid by cryptocurrencies, leaving 13% paid by travel credits and only 12% by traditional currencies. Travala’s native AVA altcoin raised to the top with 14% of use, followed by Binance Pay with 12% and Bitcoin at 8%. There was a 41% of use for other cryptocurrencies.
The CEO certainly met the expectations of his past statement, and now expressed in the Q3 report:
Even with the last years being the most challenging on record for the travel industry, Travala.com has grown exponentially as the rise in cryptocurrency adoption has more than offset the negative impact of the pandemic.
Travala’s report states that the Binance Mini-App integration, which allows customers to purchase services directly from their Binance exchange wallets, “has grown quickly to drive more bookings than any individual token”.
Crypto Traveling: Token Votes And NFT Memories
AVA is Travala’s decentralized token that provides economic incentives for users and aims to build a community of guests and hosts that has the power to vote inside the platform. A number of 44,438 AVA tokens were issued “for standard booking givebacks, Smart loyalty, and invite program rewards”, which translates to $155,248.
Since August 2021, 30% of all net revenues from Travala.com are now converted to AVA and added to the Community Pool on a monthly basis. (…) The tokens will be used for initiatives that expand the AVA token’s reach and create more diverse use cases, which we expect will benefit the Travala.com platform as well as AVA.
Travala started to implement the Community Pool and Community Vote using decentralized AVA token governance to give their users the true opportunity to propose changes.
The community proposals came up with a concept they are currently working on, “proof-of-travel” NFTs, approved with 89.6% of community votes. It consists in allowing their users to claim NFTs through a blockchain-based record of their travels as part of the Smart membership status.
We can expect this launch to happen during Q4, as they said they are “devoting a lot of resources to this as a priority.”
They are also planning for more partnerships to integrate their mini-app into other exchanges and metaverses, as well as upgrading their wallet infrastructure to support the tokens BEP2, BEP20, and ERC20.
The company has invested in growing its development team by 23% during Q3, hiring engineers and customer support teams to improve its core platform and booking infrastructure. They aim to grow their team’s headcount even further to 50% in Q4.
Travala announced they plan to keep growing and expanding their platform’s reach, focusing on providing a better booking experience “for crypto travelers around the world”. As the travel industry was greatly affected by the times of the pandemic, the company aims for exponential growth by adapting crypto innovations to the industry.
So far, by Travala’s report alone, many can see how crypto adoption brings the possibility of growth, innovation, jobs, and even new ways to travel and experience the world. As the pandemic changed many aspects of everyone’s life, it is outstanding to see that blockchain tech brought improvements.
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