Travala.com, which facilitates travel booking with cryptos as mode of payment, has stated that it has entered into a partnership with Binance Chain intending to decentralize its services.
Travala.com aims to introduce referral system, sales force and reviews, in addition to accommodation bookings in a decentralized manner.
Juan Otero, CEO of Travala.com, detailed that in the months ahead, users will deal in a straight forward manner with owners of property, capitalizing on blockchain’s ability to avoid intermediates:
“Under this decentralized model, accommodation seekers will be able to book stays without the need for an intermediary. Said another way, individuals seeking to rent an apartment, bedroom, or hotel room will be able to deal directly with property owners.”
Otero detailed that Travala.com will only offer the know-how required to enable bookings, including software for assessing standing of users, resolving issues and administration processes. Providers of travel service will be have total control of all features related to their listings on platform and will dealings with customers without involvement of intermediate.
Once the firm introduces the decentralized accommodation booking facility, a decentralized review service will be brought about. Reviews will be saved on-chain to guarantee that they cannot be altered or amended after submission.
Otero also elaborated that in an effort to avoid fake reviews, Travala.com aims to utilize tokenized awards and only permit reviews from users that have traveled to a particular place by booking using the platform.
Currently, Otero does not precisely point out the level to which Travala.com’s business can be shifted on chain. He detailed “in the long-run, ideally all aspects of the [decentralized online travel agency] will be on-chain,” but agreed that this may not be realistic:
“Realistically we will have to phase out what aspects of the [firm] are on-chain. As we are closer to the implementation of certain features we will review the trade-offs of being on-chain versus off-chain.”
It is the most recent development for Travala.com, which is taking aggressive steps for business expansion. Earlier in August, Travala.com listed 600,000 hotels via collaboration with booking behemoth Agoda.
Last month, Expedia also collaborated with the company, including more than 700,000 accommodation listings on the platform, which paved way for 68% rise in bookings.
