NFT Nights: Book a Villa with NFT
Get your hands on the first NFT booking in history 😉
“Do you hear this sound? No? Listen closely. Get closer to the ground, my friend. It’s the sound of change and it’s roaring and it’s coming.
Slowly, then suddenly.”
Hernest Hemingwei.
THE “NFT Nights” EXPERIMENT STARTS TODAY!
We are putting a first NFT booking on the market.
This is hopefully just a first: we plan to release several NFTs in a long term experiment and learn along the way how to best leverage this technology in the travel world.
BEFORE WE START: THIS IS A PROTOTYPE
Maybe this whole idea makes no sense, and it will die out.
Maybe this is a Segway, it looks great now, but we realize its limitations as we start using it.
Or maybe it’s the first bicycle, and we’ll end up building motorbikes.
We just don’t know.
What we know for sure is that it’s just a first prototype, and it probably won’t work very well.
We’ll fall, we’ll see why, and we’ll improve.
First, let’s define the outcomes of the experiment:
GOOD
- We issue the NFT.
- Someone buys it.
- Someone goes to stay at the property.
GREAT
- Someone buys it and resells it on the market.
- The last buyer goes to stay at the property.
AMAZING
- The NFT is sold to collectors after the stay.
LET’S START WITH A BEAUTIFUL VILLA IN IBIZA
We decided to start with a stunning property in a great location, Ibiza.
The managers are Carlo Menotti Teofoli, from Myibiza.estate, and Nicola Carunchio from Nconnect-ibiza.com.
Carlo is the brother of Francesco, one of the multisig owners of the Trips safe and a super early Trips Community member.
This gives us the assurance that the booking will be honored, removing a potential pain point.
So, if you buy this NFT, you are 100% sure you’ll get to stay at the villa.
The family guarantees, capisch? 🤌
THE FIRST TRAVEL NFT IN HISTORY
The “Villa Natura” in Ibiza
Check out all the villa details on the Booking.com listing.
The Dates
This NFT is for the week from Saturday the 28th of August to Saturday the 4th of September 2021.
The Price: 20% less than the OTAs at launch
The OTA price is €6614 for 10 people (€6249 for 9 people, €5883 for 8 people)
The NFT price is €5200 for 10 people (€4888 for 9 people, €4628 for 8 people).
It’s about 20% less.
Wait, this one is beautiful!
A DAO was formed to buy the NFT after the stay, for its historical value.
That’s an extra €1800 savings at least. Read more >>
The Cancellation Policy
Non-Refundable, resell allowed.
You can resell the booking, by reselling the NFT.
This is a new possibility not offered in the traditional channels, and we are very curious to see how it goes.
You can also buy it and put it up for sale immediately after purchase.
Since it’s 20% cheaper than OTA price, you have some margin to play with.
Date change: allowed
You can change the dates up to until 30 days before arrival.
A supplement will be paid in case the newly chosen dates are more expensive.
A refund will be issued if they are cheaper.
Covid-19 Conditions
- If Ibiza shuts down in that period, we’ll issue a full refund.
- If the country of departure for the guests shuts down in that period, the NFT will be spendable in another property in Ibiza in 2021 or 2022. The available properties are many.
- A price difference will be added or refunded.
Damage Deposit
This villa requires an €800 cash refundable deposit on arrival.
Booking.com allows a max €300 deposit, which is not acceptable to the owner.
So this is what you see in Booking:
After a guest books the property manager informs the guests that the deposit is, of course, not €1; but €800 instead.
This is not manager-friendly, nor guest-friendly.
This is an OTA restriction NFTs don’t have.
With the NFT it’s clear: an €800 cash refundable deposit on arrival.
THE MARKETPLACE
We have decided to launch on OpenSea, the leading NFT marketplace which recently received a $23 M investment from Andreessen Horowitz, Mark Cuban, Tim Ferriss, Naval Ravikant, 3LAU (who recently concluded the biggest music NFT sale in history with our partners at Origin Protocol) and others.
The Gas Costs
From the buyer’s point of view the only possible cost is to acquire WETH:
- Gas fees for wrapping ETH into WETH (Wrapped ETH):
That sounds complicated but in fact you just follow the instructions and pay about $10.
This step is not necessary if you already own WETH.
Alternatively you can buy some WETH on the market.
Other Costs
OpenSea charges a 2.5% commission on each sale which is paid by the owner.
It’s free for the buyer.
Trips guarantees: no Volatility Risk for the Host:
For this first experiment we decided to accept Ether, which is a volatile asset.
By the time we cash them, the NFT may be worth less in Euro (or more).
In other sales we’ll be able to accept stable coins, always worth $1, but in this case we wanted to do an auction and there was no other option.
The managers won’t risk anything:
- Worst case scenario: they get the €5200, which is the asking price.
- Best case scenario: they get more. This happens when the auction ends on a higher price AND the price of ETH does not go down too much to nullify it.
If it goes down too much, we at Trips cover for it (how should be left for a totally different article, but there are ways to hedge this risk).
What’s in it For Us
Where do we make money here?
This is an experiment, so we don’t really worry about that, but in case the NFT is sold again after the initial purchase, we will make 1% on each subsequent sale.
In future NFTs we will also experiment with sharing this fee with the owner.
Also, if the final price is over the offer, we will share 50% with the managers.
This money will be used for subsequent auction based NFTs to cover our potential losses if ETH prices go down.
THE BASE VALUE OF THE NFT
When a guest thinks the ETH price is going down. He/she can buy the NFT which has a real world value of €5200 and can be resold at that price (no matter what the ETH price is)
THE LONG TERM VALUE OF THE NFT
So far we have talked about the value of the stay.
But what about the future value?
Here’s a few reasons why this NFT may acquire value in the years to come:
- Historical value:
It’s the first NFT booking in travel in history.
The market may decide to put in the same category as the first Tweet (sold for $2.9M), NBA top shots videos (some worth up to $200,000) or the famous Beeple JPG which sold for $69M.
It will be monumental for the travel industry transition to Web3, and someone will want to own it just for its historical value.
Imagine 10 years from now, a future in which bookings are made on NFTs, and you own the first one. - Visibility value:
It may attract a lot of attention for the owner, and we know attention is a currency in itself nowadays. It may bring press, interviews and so on. - Airdrops value:
It could attract airdrops in the future: free nights, special deals, tokens, other NFTs and so on. This is already happening in DeFi and I see no reason why the travel industry would miss out on the opportunity to reach out directly to their customer base. Being able to host the owner of the first travel NFT in history could attract a lot of attention.
These are ideas which come when you look at what’s happening already in other industries.
Of course, there is no guarantee, but it’s a possibility the market will consider these things when pricing this first NFT.
WANT TO JOIN?
We received several applications, and we hope to bring them all to the market.
Thank you all for applying!
BUY THE NFT!
Enough talk.
The auction has started on the 7th of April and will end on Monday the 19th of April at 3PM Ibiza time.
During these 12 days you can make several offers.
Let’s go!
Get on OpenSea and make your offer!
Get deeper down the Trips Community rabbit hole
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