My first booking with Travala.com
After receiving an airdrop of a few Travala (AVA) tokens, I started doing a little research into the project. Unlike the thousands of blockchain based tokens that were overwhelming with technological words and details about many things I have no knowledge of, Travala appeared to be a project which was actually going to be of some use. And low and behold the project materialised, showed and continues to show fantastic development and as many people are starting to find out…..actually WORKS!…..and the key thing here…..in most cases SAVES you money!
I travel a fair bit but just to certain locations usually, so I was waiting for Travala’s latest update for them to add Hong Kong, a location I was due to visit this October. And the update hit the site, adding many more countries and hotels to the booking site, taking them to around 160,000 properties as of October 2018 covering around 30 countries! Legit!
I’ve used booking.com often and some of the other travel booking sites, but being a fan of the Neo ecosystem and having belief that crypto projects like this will play a big part in our future, I had to give it a whirl.
At the moment (soon to change later this year) you can only book with the AVA token, but credit cards and other cryptos are soon to be supported. I headed over to Switcheo Network and used some of my NEO to buy a few thousand Travala.com - It's Travel Time tokens. Currently trading at 0.06 cents I was a little worried this could turn into the 10,000BTC pizza story, but I figured we need to use the projects to make them grow and its easy to get some more NEO and pick up some more Travala with the prices so low at the moment, I just used the money out of my bank account/credit card anyway, and replaced what I booked with.
The hotel
I tested the platform with a 2 night stay at the Harbour Plaza Hotels and Resorts in North Point. This is a fantastic hotel, with a very competitive price for Hong Kong, I’ve stayed there before and you get a great sized room. Many of the hotels in Hong Kong can be smaller with tiny bathrooms etc, especially if you are looking around the <$150 per night places. Harbour Plaza breaks the mould, I’d highly recommend it.
As you can see below the room was great, spacious by Hong Kong standards and check in/check out is super smooth. The hotel had some great services for breakfast, transfers etc.
Pricing and fees
Travala packaged everything up nicely, all inclusive price and you could see exactly what you were paying, I was set on using Travala anyway for this booking. If I’d booked with booking.com, as a member I’d have got a saving, but after the 10% service charge I’d still have paid $367 for the 2 nights, versus Travala at $353. A none member with booking.com would have spent $420 for the same room, for the same nights. Travala would save this customer over 15%. A no brainer!
The future?
I doubt I will use another booking platform again for hotel stays, unless Travala doesn’t have a particular hotel I would like to stay at, however at the rate the team are adding hotels, the possibility of flight bookings, and many other potential services, Travala could end up being a one stop shop for all travel related purchases.
Currently trading at 6cents with a total market cap of around US$2million, Travala is an awesome project that works, even with a token value of US$10, you’d still only see Travala with a US$300million market cap, a fraction of the size of many of the existing booking sites and many of the hugely inflated crypto project market caps we saw in 2017. I see Travala as a smart investment, and whilst many supports see triple figure predictions, I’m just happy to buy a few now and get some cheaper Travel options in the future.