The CEO of online travel giant Booking Holdings believes that blockchain-based currencies will continue to grow and could become more popular. Glenn Fogel, who was also recently appointed CEO of Booking.com, expressed his support for cryptocurrencies in an interview with New York-based travel publication Skift on Aug. 20. In the interview, Fogel discussed blockchain and crypto alongside with major issues in the travel industry, including over-tourism. Potential for a new global currency When asked about the future of payment systems in travel, Fogel emphasized that it needs to be seamless, adding that data security must be prioritized. Predicting that cash …

Bitcoin (BTC) rewards shopping app Lolli has expanded its business by adding major booking service Hotels.com to its partners, the company announced in a blog post on June 25. With the new partnership, the New York-based firm now has two of the world’s top three travel websites including Booking.com and Hotels.com, Lolli said in the announcement, citing data from traffic analytics service SimilarWeb. Founded in March 2018, Lolli allows users to earn Satoshis (sats), the smallest unit of bitcoin currency worth of 0.00000001 BTC, while shopping online. The firm claims to be the first bitcoin rewards application with over 500 …

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Corporate Traveller, the largest travel management firm in the United Kingdom, is now accepting Bitcoin (BTC) for payments, according to a press release on April 15. A newly announced partnership with crypto payments company BitPay will allow Corporate Traveller — which provides business travel management services to SME companies — to accept bitcoins. Andy Hegley, U.K. General Manager at Corporate Traveller said: “We identified an increasing demand from our clients for the option to pay in bitcoin for business travel bookings made by our travel consultants. We chose BitPay to manage our merchant processing because they make it easy and …

The Europe-based company LockTrip wants to put the accommodation industry on the blockchain by creating “the first functional blockchain-based travel service.” The team says it already offers 100,000 hotels and more than 1,500 vacation rentals all over the world, with an average discount of almost 20 percent when compared to other booking sites — and with plans to add an additional 300,000 hotels and 900 airlines to its marketplace by end of January 2019. Smart contract travel booking Accommodations with zero commission can be booked directly through the existing LockTrip’s beta marketplace. To make the booking process easier for users …

Canada’s largest airline Air Canada has announced its participation on a blockchain-based travel distribution platform developed by Swiss blockchain startup Winding Tree, according to a press release published Oct. 24. Air Canada was established in 1937 and provides scheduled and charter passengers and cargo air transportation. In 2017, Air Canada carried 48.1 million passengers, with an increase by 7.3 percent compared with 2016, per the company’s 2017 annual report. Air Canada has signed a letter of intent to participate in a decentralized open-source travel distribution platform developed by blockchain travel ecosystem Winding Tree. Through the integration of a new blockchain …

European airline holding company Air France-KLM has partnered with blockchain travel ecosystem Winding Tree. The goal of the partnership is to reduce costs for the company’s customers by cutting out intermediaries. The alliance has revealed the new deal in a release published on its official website Thursday, Oct. 4. The world's fifth largest air company by revenue in 2018, Air France-KLM hopes blockchain will help it provide "a more advantageous travel offer for customers which is more profitable for suppliers, in particular by reducing the number of intermediaries." Sonia Barriere, the executive vice president for Strategy and Innovation at Air …

Japan’s budget airline company, Peach Airlines, is set to accept Bitcoin as a legitimate payment method by the end of the year. Aside from that, the company announced itsplans to install Bitcoin ATMs in Japan airports in a move that will encourage usage of the leading cryptocurrency. Will others follow soon? Though they weren’t the first airline company in the world to accept Bitcoin as a payment method (AirBaltic being the first one), Peach Airlines is one of the more well known airlines that bring passengers to many Asian countries such as China and Korea. Even though Peach Airlines has …

In the early days of Bitcoin’s infancy when the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto announced Bitcoin to the Cyperpunks world, and the likes of Hal Finney, Martti Malmi, and Gavin Andresen helped to work on improving its code, not many would have thought it possible to travel around the world using Bitcoins. That was until programmer Felix Weis wanted to find out the answer. However, the only way to find out was to undertake the experiment himself, and that’s exactly what he did. Originally from Luxembourg, but living in Berlin, Weis first discovered the digital currency in 2012 when his trust in …

Strictly speaking, we just provided our moral and financial support to it. The members of the expedition, held this year from February 26 to March 8, were journalists of the “Govorit i Pokazyvaet” production studio and BitNovosti web-site, who paid all their travel expenses only with cryptocurrency. The tour started and finished in Moscow, and the team drove through Lithuania, Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, and Belarus. The farthermost point of the tour was the capital of Netherlands, Amsterdam. The goal of this project was to capture the current state of development of the Bitcoin infrastructure and to …

Using money while abroad has been a major problem for travelers since, well, the inception of money although I haven’t had the chance to try Bitcoin for that purpose just yet. Attempts to solve this problem of exchange have included everything from seashells to precious metals to fiat currency with mixed results. However, the potential benefits for travelers cannot be denied as Bitcoins are frictionless, commission-free, and may be even considered by some to be the first true global currency. Converting is a pain Probably more of a habit than anything else, I still have much trust in hard cash. …

Gibraltar-based startup Travelers Box took a shot at helping travelers convert their leftover coins into usable currencies by introducing their first kiosk in Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. Machines like these have been tried before and still seem to find success on European ferry lines between ports where different currencies are used (UK to France, for example, or Stockholm to Helsinki). Travelers Box added a twist to their machines, though. Users could convert their change into online accounts with PayPal, Qiwi, or Bitcoin. Well, now the Bitcoin option is off the board because people found out about it and went nuts. Said …