TRVL

<h2 id="header-0">Introduction: Booking Vacation Rentals with Crypto</h2><p>Over the past 10 years we’ve seen rapid innovation in digital payments. Technologies involving mobile wallets and payment apps, QR codes, and buy-now-pay-later have fundamentally changed the digital payments landscape. While these innovations have made transacting easier than ever before, the layers upon which the transactions settle has remained unchanged for decades. But, with mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies, the base layer for transaction settlement is changing quickly.</p><p>With a settlement layer based on blockchain technology, transacting in cryptocurrencies offers decentralized, secure, and often faster and cheaper transactions compared to traditional methods. Cryptocurrency payments are making their way into all aspects of our lives. In particular, consumers are turning to cryptocurrency as a preferred payment option when booking travel, or while traveling as a way to transfer funds and avoid foreign exchange fees.</p><p><img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/bec2bc3bc0e948cfb959c7d4e2541c0b.png" /></p><p>Besides using cryptocurrencies as a payment method for booking travel or spending while abroad, cryptocurrencies offer other benefits to the travel industry.</p><p>Firstly with loyalty. If they exist, travel loyalty programs lock users into a platform. Loyalty points are not usually transferable, or only transferable with a steep cost. Additionally, platforms are disincentivized to redeem traveler loyalty points for real value, because it comes at a cost to the platform&#39;s margins. Since major online travel agencies are publicly traded, shareholders expect the companies to maximize their profits - meaning it&#39;s in the company&#39;s interests to not have travelers redeem loyalty points. This is why you may see a lot of sub-par loyalty points offers, or redemption only available for off-peak travel bookings.</p><p>Finally, cryptocurrencies introduce a new paradigm to the role users have in growing a platform. Instead of just extracting value from users like traditional web2 platforms, cryptocurrencies empower companies to reward those who contribute to growth.</p><p>With frustrations around the misaligned incentives of web2 platforms like Airbnb and the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies coming to a head, travel and more specifically, the vacation rental industry, stands to onboard more users to web3 than any other industry. Up until recently, externally owned accounts (EOAs) like MetaMask, have made interacting with web3 applications a burden for non-crypto native users. This, however, is all about to change, and Dtravel’s community-owned travel ecosystem is paving the way for vacation rental operators and property managers across the globe to keep up with trends and not fall behind when it comes to accepting cryptocurrencies.</p><h2 id="header-1">Dtravel Direct Customers Demand Innovative Wallet Solutions</h2><p>Right now, there are vacation rental operators across the globe using Dtravel’s blockchain-based infrastructure to power their direct booking business. Many of these operators are even doing so without the help of the soon to be released “Find a Stay” product, Dtravel’s advanced AI-powered metasearch engine for helping travelers discover vacation rentals that can be booked in peer-to-peer manner, anywhere in the world.</p><p>Dtravel’s earliest adopters have for the most part, all been crypto-native property managers, a contributing factor, which helped lead to <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/08/04/dtravel-completes-first-smart-contract-vacation-rental-booking/#:~:text&#61;Dtravel&#39;s%20first%20smart%20contract%2Dbased,initial%20version%20in%20November%202021." rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">the world’s first smart contract powered vacation rental booking</a>. The growth of Dtravel adoption across the globe has resulted in large property management companies wanting to gain exposure to crypto payments and Dtravel’s direct booking distribution network. This however, has created many challenges for Dtravel Direct, Dtravel’s direct booking infrastructure for vacation rental operators. Property management companies (PMCs) have a fiduciary responsibility to property owners, making EOAs an operational risk. The market is demanding wallets with spending policies, user roles, permissions, allowlists and recovery mechanisms, making it necessary for Dtravel to innovate. In the near future, property managers and vacation rental operators will be able to interact with cryptocurrencies without having to deal with any of the complexities associated with blockchain technology.</p><h2 id="header-2">The Evolution of Dtravel’s Payment Smart Contract</h2><p>Dtravel aims to make direct bookings without intermediaries seamless by enabling crypto payments between travelers and vacation rental operators. The way Dtravel’s smart contract booking technology works today is that payments are routed from the traveler to the vacation rental operator via an escrow smart contract. The smart contract has rules such as payment types, a cancellation window and relies on the BNB Chain as the default network for payment settlement.</p><p>This initial version of the booking smart contract (v1) supports non-custodial wallet connectivity through MetaMask, an EOA, which for non-crypto native property managers is a barrier to adoption due to the complex user experience of needing to manage seed phrases. Furthermore, Dtravel will soon upgrade the booking smart contracts to v3, enabling Nite Tokens (NTs) based on the ERC721 token standard. After a booking is made, a traveler will receive a NT for each night they booked. NTs are transferable between travelers.</p><p>While innovative, the use of EOAs in Dtravel’s current booking smart contract system poses adoption challenges:</p><ul><li>Small market of Metamask users and challenging private key management</li><li>Confusing experience to switch blockchain networks for payment settlement</li><li>Challenging experience to customize payment options and blockchain networks</li><li>Users are required to buy and hold BNB to pay for BNB Chain network gas fees</li><li>No simple way for users to buy or sell crypto</li></ul><p>In order to drive mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency payments, Dtravel will be introducing smart wallet technology by way of WaaS (wallets as a service) for vacation rental operators and property managers.</p><h2 id="header-3">What is WaaS?</h2><p>Wallets-as-a-service (WaaS) allows users to seamlessly create cryptocurrency wallets natively within Dtravel Direct, reducing onboarding friction and abstracting away blockchain complexities for non-crypto native property managers.</p><p>Once fully integrated, property managers will be able to create a cryptocurrency wallet for receiving booking payments and earning TRVL rewards as easily as creating a new email account. With WaaS, property managers will also be able to set up multiple wallets and accept crypto payments on behalf of clients without mixing funds.</p><p>For vacation rental operators and property managers, WaaS provides many benefits including:</p><ul><li>Easy wallet creation via email or social media login</li><li>Simplified network switching</li><li>Increased security by not having to store private keys</li><li>Easily customize various payment options across numerous blockchain networks</li><li>A crypto on-ramp via credit card and off-ramp to a bank account</li></ul><p>In summary, WaaS will accelerate the adoption of crypto payments, enabling an easier way for property managers to interact with crypto and off-ramp crypto earnings into fiat in order to pay property owners and operational overhead.</p><h2 id="header-4">How Smart Wallet Integration will Benefit the Dtravel Ecosystem</h2><p>Dtravel is a driving force when it comes to innovation in the vacation rental industry. The latest of which comes by the way of NTs. We’ll explore the concept around NTs further in a future blog post, but in essence, NTs will enable travelers to own the rights to a stay at a specific listing for a set date range.</p><p>WaaS also offers significant benefits to the <a href="https://www.dtravel.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Dtravel</a> ecosystem as a whole. For example, WaaS will support new blockchain networks, not only empowering property managers to deploy listings across the most in demand networks, but enabling Dtravel as a project, to capitalize on partnership opportunities and co-marketing initiatives.</p><h2 id="header-5">Summary: Mainstream Crypto Payments in Travel</h2><p>The vacation rental industry is poised to drive mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency payments. Dtravel&#39;s blockchain-based booking platform, <a href="https://www.dtravel.com/operators/dtravel-direct" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Dtravel Direct</a>, has seen rapid growth, with property managers from all over the world using it to create their own booking site and accept payments directly from guests. However, reliance on EOAs like MetaMask have posed adoption challenges for non-crypto native operators. To address this, Dtravel is introducing wallet-as-a-service (WaaS). WaaS will allow easy wallet creation and abstract away blockchain complexities. Operators can easily create cryptocurrency wallets to receive payments and rewards, set up multiple wallets, and accept crypto without mixing funds. WaaS also enables smooth network switching, increased security, diverse payment options, and fiat on/off ramps. This will make it seamless for operators to accept crypto payments. WaaS paves the way for innovations like NTs and helps bring mainstream crypto adoption to travel.</p>

Onboarding the Vacation Rental Industry to Crypto with Smart Wallets

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Dtravel

Ďalšie články zverejnené 22. 12. 2023

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