ystems Signal Next Step for Blockchain
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. “But eventually the vision, as we move to true decentralization, is that all aspects of the smart contract could be controlled by a host. We recognize that not all hosts will want this responsibility but for the ones that do... they could
deploy their own smart contract and manage it and make changes to it as well. That’s the vision we’re building toward.” Hostaway founder and CEO Marcus Rader says he believes systems such as Dtravel will continue to gain traction in part because “there are a lot of people who are not fans of big, centrally-controlled systems.” “Dtravel’s cutting-edge approach to community and its mission around empowering hosts to not only know but personally realize the benefits of Web3 is inspiring and will surely change the way this business is conducted well into the future,” he says. Rader says about 2,000 property managers with 40,000 properties currently use Hostaway and some have started to ask questions about blockchain-based distribution. While he will not predict how many will choose to enable bookings through Dtravel, he expects it will attract interest. “Usually, property managers want to minimize the amount of time that they spend, because time is money and it eats into their profit margin... so most focus on the channels that work really well for them,” Rader says. “But I think for Dtravel they are bit different because there will be a lot of passion-driven decisions – people will choose to go live with this whether it brings them bookings or not. And having a simple reservation process actually makes it easier for the property manager compared to some of the new OTAs that have come out in recent years.” https://www.phocuswire.com/new-bookingsystems-from-winding-tree-dtravel-signal-nextstep-for-blockchain-distribution
13 | ABA Publications | Africa TRAVEL | May 2022
Image credit: appadvice.com
