Or just travelers in general, honestly. One of the major things getting in the way of mass adoption of crypto currency is a question that I think all of us who are involved with it get asked on a regular basis: "What can you actually buy with it?" Sometimes this question is asked by people with genuine curiosity but other times it is asked by people that have a chip on their shoulder about crypto in general and seem to actually want it to fail. One of the blanket statements I would receive is some made up statistic such as "90% of crypto purchases are for drugs and illegal weapons" because this particular person's only exposure to cryto was the news about Silkroad.
Anyway, that is a rant for another time. I will admit that for the average user that purchasing things with crypto is a relatively complicated matter. It has to be. That is the entire nature of the security behind it. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was an intermediary company with the financial resources and clout to enable us to use a wide variety of crypto in order to purchase something as common as say, flights and hotels?
Well, now there is one
Travala.com has actually existed for quite some time but it didn't make it to the mainstream until recently when they made a partnership with one of the largest travel booking sites in the world, Agoda. Instantly, they gained access to a million or so properties and flights in one stroke of the pen. Now, if you want to book that flight or hotel, you can use a wide variety of cryptos and the options are constantly expanding.
Just look at that! If you are a fan of crypto doesn't that just make you feel good inside? Technically it was possible to do all of these things using crypto in the past but it was considerably more complicated and had the potential to be a scam or have very high fees associated with the transaction since the only choice the intermediary had was to convert your crypto to cash and then hand it over to the eventual provider of the hotel or flight. I have no idea how the process worked and I am not going to speculate but you can imagine that retailers were unwilling to handle the volatility of crypto.
At the moment, Travala has access to 600 flight carriers and 2.2 million rental properties globally. This is right on par with any other popular booking site that exists on the planet.
Even though very few options are available for travel at the moment I strongly suggest that you go over to their website and have a look around, maybe even sign up for an account. Like most booking sites you don't have to have an account to use the system, but they have a reward program in place similar to other sites that encourage repeat business.
If you were one of the few people with the foresight to jump on this gravy train before the contract signing with Agoda, you are celebrating right now. I had an opportunity about 4 months ago to get involved and I don't remember why I decided not to (probably laziness and difficulty to find exchanges that were dealing with Travala (AVA) at the time), but i am really kicking myself right now.
So I'm not suggesting anyone invest in it now and please don't see this post as a suggestion that you should do so. Look to me for travel advice, not investment advice :O
I am just so happy that this sort of thing exists for those of us that would love to see more options as far as bookings are concerned. There is no massive fee for using crypto either, it is basically exactly the same as if you were using a credit card.
So get over there to travala.com and check them out. This is for me, and perhaps for you, a very big development in the crypto world. Now that I've gotten that out of the way I'm gonna go buy a rocket launcher and some crack on Silkroad.
That is good news. Imagine waiting for a pump and booking a holiday at next to nothing prices. I think it will become the norm over the next 10 years and look forward to Hive going up in value.
Indeed, that would be awesome for all of us for sure.
I was going to say why isn't this all over the news but then I remembered that the only time the news talks about crypto is to present it in a negative light because we all know that it is only used to buy illegal things on the dark web, right?
Yeah the MSM are likely in the pocket of banks and they wouldn't want to ever present crypto in any sort of positive light. To this day when I talk to people about it the only thing they know about it is that it is definitely used to buy drugs on silk road Which hasn't existed for quite some time.
I've been sitting on a pile of XRP for a while now. I see that is one of the coins they accept. The next time I fly i'll definitely have a look!
nice! I probably wouldn't have heard about this if it wasn't for someone mentioning it in a place like this. Got it bookmarked and have the app now. I'm sure I'll use it as soon as we are allowed to fly freely again. For now, I don't want the hassle associated with travel, especially by plane... it was irritating enough before all the new regulations came about.
i'm curious to see how many airlines go under because of all this. Most of those airlines were constantly complaining about how they weren't making any money already so 6 months of no customers will probably put a lot of them under.