Excerpt from PhocusWire
Efforts to create decentralized, blockchain-based travel booking platforms have been in development for several years but now two new systems are debuting – one for hotels and the other for short-term rentals.
The creation of these new direct-to-consumer channels, for hotels by Winding Tree and rentals by Dtravel, marks a new stage in the evolution of blockchain for travel distribution – and evidence that what may have initially been viewed as a fad is now gaining much broader acceptance and adoption.
And while these two new offerings are launching with different strategies, both are focused on putting more control and more revenue into the hands of hoteliers and rental hosts.
WIN from Winding Tree
Since going live last Wednesday, Winding Tree says it has had more than 80 rooms nights booked through its new WIN tool at three Amsterdam hotels that are participating in the pilot - DoubleTree by Hilton Amsterdam Centraal Station, Hotel Herbergh and Zoku Amsterdam.
This is the first – and for now only – city where the system is operational, as part of Winding Tree’s new strategy to launch WIN in conjunction with blockchain-industry events. In this case the event is Devconnect, an Ethereum conference that began yesterday and ends on April 25. Future launches are timed to coincide with Ethereum-focused events in the coming months, including ones in Paris, Prague and Bogota.
For this first use case, Winding Tree promoted the opportunity through its social media channels, and in the future says it hopes to partner with conference organizers to share the booking link tied to their events.
“Winding Tree, since the beginning, we are trying to fix the travel industry from the inside - trying to change the plumbing for companies. It’s been all about distribution from the beginning,” says Maksim Izmaylov, Winding Tree co-founder and CEO.
“We’ve been talking to hotels and airlines and there’s always all these barriers – ‘This is so hard, we have to talk to corporate...’ We cannot and we will not limit ourselves anymore by these guys limitations... so we said how about we go B2C.”
For now the system is not set up to connect directly to hotels to capture live availability and rates. Instead the three hotels participating in this test in Amsterdam have provided a fixed number of rooms to list on WIN, at prices the operators say sit somewhere between their direct booking rate and those offered on online travel agencies such as Booking.com and Expedia.
“We get about 30% of our business directly and then about 25% through a couple of the main online travel agents. And that business is of course commissionable and depending on the type of placement you want to have you can end up paying anywhere between 12- to 25%,” says Floris Licht, manager of the DoubleTree.
“So for us as a hotel it’s always interesting to explore different distribution channels and different ways of booking.... And we are happy to split that saving between us and the guest, so something like 10% cheaper is not unachievable.”
A sample booking inquiry found rates discounted substantially more than 10% compared to the OTAs. For a queen, single occupancy room for three nights, April 25 to 28, at the DoubleTree (not including city tax or tourism fee) WIN offered a rate of $627 while it was $949 on Booking.com and $953 on Expedia.
Dtravel’s pivot
Dtravel launched last June as a marketplace for blockchain-based bookings of private accommodations.
Now the company is changing its model. After meeting with hosts over the last several months to learn more about their needs, it will launch a direct booking product that is set to go live in May.
“There’s a real desire [from hosts] to drive more bookings back to their direct sites,” says Melanie Amos, head of operations at Dtravel.
“OTAs bring a lot of demand and there are some benefits that come with it. But for a lot of hospitality entrepreneurs, vacation rental property managers, they are getting repeat bookings and repeat guests, so being able to drive them to a direct booking product was something that was going to add real value to their business.”
Dtravel is starting with a minimum viable product launching in partnership with Hostaway. Through an API integration to its property management system, Hostaway customers have the option to “turn on” Dtravel as a distribution channel, enabling on-chain bookings without a big learning curve or change in operations for hosts.
“But the booking is facilitated through a smart contract. That’s where the transparency, the control comes back to the host in the settings that they’ve indicated for cancellations, pricing – that smart contract, once the booking is executed, effectively takes care of when the payment goes out, when cancellation is available or not,” Amos says.
“From the front end as a guest or as a host it’s a very familiar booking experience, but it’s the transparency and control on the back end through the smart contracts and blockchain that is really the differentiating factor.”
By enabling Dtravel as a distribution channel, hosts get a “listing page” for their properties that can be shared directly with guests to complete a booking.
Payment can be made in cryptocurrency, with no fee to the guest, or with a fiat currency, in which case the guest would pay a conversion fee.
Hosts must create a cryptocurrency wallet – Dtravel provides assistance if needed – and connect that to the system to access their revenue.
For each booking hosts pay a 5% fee that goes into Dtravel’s community treasury, which is used to run the platform. Like Winding Tree’s WIN, Dtravel is a decentralized autonomous organization, giving all members ownership and the ability to participate in governance, including decisions on how funds are spent.
“They don’t need to worry about the smart contract space, because we do all of that for them,” says Cynthia Huang, head of growth at Dtravel.
Click here to read complete article at PhocusWire.