Ed on safari

I began my travel and hospitality career to Zimbabwe in the 90s. I became a specialist, working with safari tours in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, and Botswana. I met people from all around the world and thoroughly enjoyed giving them a positive experience with the beautiful wildlife.

At this time, Zimbabwe was facing political challenges, and Mozambique suffered detrimental floods, deeply affecting the tourism industry. I decided to sell my company after 11 amazing years.

Fast forward to 2014, when my family and I were living in Uruguay. I met an eclectic group of American ex-pats who sought a more simple life in South America. These people were passionate about the possibilities of cryptocurrency and the blockchain, and told me about the possibilities of the immutable ledger. I had worked in the hotel and restaurant industry for years, so I began to wonder how I could use blockchain technology to improve this industry. The more I learned, the more I conceptualized Trippki to improve on the customer rewards model. Shortly after, I decided to return to London to learn more and build a team.

London, as a lot of us know, is a hub for the future of fintech. Upon my return, I attended blockchain meetups to learn more and meet interesting people. I began sharing my idea with people I met and the response was very positive.

When the internet first came about, it was a jungle of information, and many industries changed the way they did business. For the travel industry, it was the first time guests could reach out and book their vacations via online travel agents like Expedia or Booking.com. These OTAs provided consumers a way to book their vacations easily and efficiently. Unfortunately the hotel pays for this, as they are charged 20–30% commission, which means less money is allocated to the staff and overall customer experience.

Ed Cunningham, Trippki’s founder & CEO

Trippki’s purpose is to make rewards programs more user friendly, and actually function in the way they were meant: to empower customers to travel more and support the hotel industry with a steady stream of customers. Guests are tired of seeing their points expire and being limited in how and where they use those points. Trippki uses our own token, TRIP, to reward guests, and they can then use the token in a variety of ways including booking a future trip, cashing out or exchanging for a different cryptocurrency. It really is far more versatile than other reward programs currently on the market.

We all want to change the world and make it a better place. Cryptocurrency offers the transparency and immutability needed to better connect hotels directly with their guests instead of a middleman taking huge commissions. A business model like Trippki’s coupled with the immutable ledger of a blockchain can benefit both the consumer and the vendor, enabling a mutually beneficial relationship between them.