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One of the greatest frustrations of purchasing tickets and planning holidays is the opacity of the whole process. There is no explanation why something costs what it costs and what and who exactly is being paid for the price of the ticket or hotel that you cough up. It is really no secret that commissions and fee are involved when buying travel related products online. We feel today that with the advent of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), we are spoilt for choices, but the truth is completely different. What appears to be choice at first sight is in fact a disguised monopoly of a few companies. Nasdaq pointed out in an article citing American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA)’s efforts to promote better search because they felt that OTAs were indulging in “deceptive marketing practices”. The AHLA research indicated that 79% of consumers use OTAs since they feel these websites offer better deals but Nasdaq quoted the association as saying, “The belief seems to be based on misleading marketing practices whereby these OTAs show how they are deeply discounting the original prices. This is not based on the actual room rates set by the hotels. Also, these sites feature false messages like ‘Only 2 rooms left!’ that propel bookers to make their bookings faster and this information, too, is not based on the actual inventory of the hotel.”
Surely there has to be a better way! Wouldn’t it be good if there was a travel platform that imbibed transparency offered by blockchain technology and a distribution system that was built on the principles of equity, democracy and fairness? Winding Tree, a Swiss based Ethereum blockchain travel platform is aiming to do just that. The platform promises to provide real choice to customers, deliver greater profitability to travel industry stakeholders and a new beginning for the travel industry.
Tokenization model for travel industry
At the heart of any change is a new way of thinking and doing things. Winding Tree’s platform will deliver change through tokenization. The Lif token would be the key to Winding Tree’s travel platform. In order to create a community of investors, users and supporters for the platform a Token Generation Event (TGE) is being held starting February 1, 2018. The price of each Lif token has been set in a range of 1000-900 Lif for 1 ETH (Ethereum). This crowdsourcing would remain uncapped for a period of two weeks and the markets will decide how many tokens are generated. Funds in excess of USD 10 mln would be stored in a Market Validation Mechanism (MVM). A part of the contribution from investors can be withdrawn by them by sending Lif to the MVM. Recently the Merkle has given Winding Tree’s ICO ‘one of the most promising ICOs of early 2018’ designation in an article. One of the features that they appreciated was the MVM.
Travel industry places its trust
Winding Tree is also getting big time support from travel majors and other entities. Some of the airline industry participants that are supporting the platform include Lufthansa, Swiss, Air New Zealand, Austrian, Brussels airlines and Eurowings. They have also snagged a tie-up with Nordic Choice Hotels, which is a major chain in the Scandinavian and Baltic regions with 190 hotels under its wing. Aruba, the tiny island country in the Caribbean has also also signed up with Winding Travel with the ATECH foundation, the country’s designated responsible authority for technical development partnering with the upcoming travel platform. This will allow tourists headed to Aruba to obtain travel products directly from the sellers on Winding Tree without having to pay the intermediaries.
A great team at the helm
Travel industry needs expertise to disrupt. As Winding Tree takes an online and blockchain approach, they have assembled a team that has people who understand not only the segment that they operate in but also the technology that is used to deliver the services. Maksim Izmaylov, the CEO is himself a software engineer and has dabbled in the travel industry as the founder of Travel Tech Con, a non-profit conference that aims to improve innovation in the industry. The CTO Jakub Vysoky is the founder and CTO of Roomstorm, which developed the airline industry’s first ever automated platform for providing hotel accomodations to passengers in event of flight disruptions. Both Maksim as well as Jakub went through Ycombinator for Roomstorm, which helps to raise funds for early stage startups. The COO Pedro Anderson is a crypto investor and a social entrepreneur. Augusto Lemble is the Blockchain Architect in charge of smart contracts development, security and integration of Winding Tree libraries and services. He is also a core contributor at Open Zeppelin. He works on technologies like state channels as well as ERC20 upgradability.
Redefining what travel should be
Re-imagining the travel industry requires participation of everyone who constitutes it. It also requires the customers to use alternatives. Winding Tree has taken a novel approach that will not only seek to provide customers and other participants in the industry with a fully functional platform but also strive to conduct activities through the Winding Tree foundation so that the travel experience can overall become better. In that sense they are aiming for ‘cheaper, better, faster travel’. Suppliers for example will stand to benefit as they can distribute their inventory directly to points of sale. Sellers will be able to access inventories from every supplier on the platform and wouldn’t have to deal with markup fees or face barriers to entry that smaller players currently have to grapple with. Customers can use Lif tokens to pay for their travel products through the platform and be assured of greater transparency than they are with today’s systems.
Winding Tree has all the potential to be a great disrupter in the travel segment and bringing real choice to the choice starved customer, should they be successful they would be able to redefine travel forever.
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The post Winding Tree Seeks to Redefine Travel appeared first on Crypto Currency Online.
source https://cryptocurrencyonline.co/winding-tree-seeks-to-redefine-travel/
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