The Binance blockchain hotel reservation service Travala has announced a partnership with Expedia, an American tour operator. Thanks to this, it will be possible to pay for rooms in 700,000 hotels from the company’s catalog using Bitcoin.
In addition to Bitcoin, the new partnership will allow Expedia to accept payments in another 30 digital currencies. Alfonso Paredes, senior vice president of the company, noted that it is important for them to give users the opportunity to independently choose the best payment method.
Expedia accepted payment in bitcoins earlier, but in 2018 refused this payment method. Juan Otero, CEO of Travala, told the publication that accepting payments in cryptocurrency did not combine with their traditional payment model. Thanks to new cooperation, the number of hotels in the Travala catalog exceeded 2.7 million. Otero added that due to the consequences of COVID-19, his company’s revenue fell by 170%, amounting to $ 184 thousand in June. At the same time, 13% of all reservation transactions were made by the company’s internal token – AVA. In November last year, Travala entered into a partnership with Booking.com’s online booking systеm, adding 90,000 hotels to the list.