Traveling on CTSI

Published in

Cartesi

5 min readNov 1, 2021

How we booked with Travala.com to attend Web Summit in Lisbon

My colleagues and I will be four of the 40,000 anticipated attendees from around the world to attend Web Summit 1–4 November. Web Summit is Europe’s largest technology conference, with more than 1,000 speakers and 1,250 companies expected to attend which makes it also one of the biggest business conferences in the world.

We’re flying in from Taipei, Amsterdam, and Moscow, armed with the required vaccination certificates. We travel safely. Plus, we’re traveling on CTSI. We booked this business trip via our trusted, early days Partner Travala.com and paid for it with our own project token. Flights as well as hotels, all in CTSI.

Traveling with CTSI. It’s that easy

Payal Patel, our Executive Assistant in charge of booking was new to paying with crypto but she said it was super easy to get it done: “It works the same as the traditional travel aggregators: you simply find and select your preferred hotels and flights. When checking out, Travala gives different payment methods of which one is cryptocurrency.” There’s quite a range of cryptocurrencies Travala.com accepts but their curation is quite strict, not every token makes it to the list.

“CTSI had a strong position in the market with our partner, Binance, and had already started to make a major mark on the crypto community. This was later compounded with their relationship with Coinbase, expanding their user base. We are excited to have CTSI as a payment method alongside currencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).”
Shane Sibley, Head of Business Development at Travala.com

Once you have selected your currency of choice it takes you to another window with Travala’s wallet address. As soon as the transfer is done, you receive a “payment received” notification and a confirmation of the booking. That’s it. All done. It was easy to find flights and hotels of our choice because they offer over 2.2 million hotels and residences, 600+ airlines, and 40,000+ activities in more than 230 countries. In total, Travala.com has over 3,000,000 travel options available.

More travel to come for your CTSI

Travala.com has swiftly grown to be a very popular firm, allowing anybody to experience the benefits of utilizing cryptocurrencies in everyday settings and thereby expanding awareness and adoption around the world.

“I think their competitive pricing is also a factor that counts in their popularity. Compared to Booking.com, Travala’s offer for the same hotel was much cheaper”.
Payal Patel, Executive Assistant at Cartesi

Though Travala.com indeed claims ‘Best Prices Guaranteed’ they don’t just serve the low-cost carrier travelers. Travala.com has recently announced the launch of Concierge.io that caters to the affluent clientele in travel, where all travelers’ needs are met. Also, luxury experiences are tailored to personal needs. Concierge.io is open for applications to have access to private jets, private islands, luxury villas, and much more. This also means CTSI holders with a very busy schedule and no time to plan their travels can have access to a team of live agents that can help book their experiences from quick, last-minute travel to a well-planned itinerary.

Why we’re traveling to Web Summit

Cartesi is the first OS on the blockchain and we want to welcome the new startups and their developers to decentralization. Blockchain, more specifically smart contracts, provides new earning models and more feasible income options for previously marginalized populations all around the world. At Web Summit we will talk to startups with an open-source mindset who believe in the power of public blockchain. Startups with a daring tech team of developers who want to change the world but who will feel restricted because they cannot code smart contracts with the rich and robust software they’re used to.

When startups with mainstream developers build on our infrastructure, they can do so with their existing codes and libraries. They do not need to master Solidity, the language of Ethereum! Cartesi is the home to what’s next: a home to all the apps developed on blockchain.

About Travala.com

Travala.com is the world’s leading cryptocurrency-friendly travel booking service. Backed by Binance, Travala.com offers consumers a platform and cryptocurrency payment gateway to 2,200,000+ properties, 400,000+ activities in 230 countries and 600 airlines around the globe, with bonuses, discounts and loyalty rewards all available alongside heavily discounted prices.

About Cartesi

Let’s face it: only 0.1% of developers have explored blockchain because of its inconveniences. Developers deal with very restrictive environments and cannot code smart contracts with mainstream software. With an operating system like Linux, they could use existing software and tools to create blockchain applications. Cartesi is the first OS on the blockchain and our Layer-2 solution integrates Linux and standard programming environments to blockchain. This allows developers to code scalable smart contracts with rich software tools and components they are used to. Cartesi bridges the gap between mainstream software and blockchain, welcoming millions of new startups and their developers to their new ‘home’ on blockchain.

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Top photo courtesy of Johny Goerend — Unsplash. Web Summit photo courtesy of Nathalie Brähler.