Explaining developments in the Travala.com Business Plan.

An overview of the updated Travala.com Business Plan and our future direction

What is Travala.com?

Travala.com is an already-operational travel booking platform soon to have 567,928 Properties in 210 Countries covering 82,311 Destinations.

The platform combines the best of this generation’s booking website functionality with the incredible benefits enabled by next generation’s decentralized technologies and tokenised incentives.

What has changed with the token use case?

Initially, when we set out, we anticipated that all payments would be processed through the AVA token. Some months ago, we began to realise that there were better ways to improve our business model going forward. Market volatility and suppliers wanting fiat payments would increase friction and needless additional transactions.

Since then we have undergone a full audit and token economic review in order to create the best possible solution for the economy of our AVA token. The mechanisms can be summarised in the following:

Booking Payments — AVA is utilised as a payment method for the platform. In time, the majority of AVA tokens will be stored, held and distributed in-platform (See points 2–5). Givebacks — Givebacks — After booking a property on the platform users can provide an blockchain-verified review to redeem AVA rewards. Reputation — With regular use of the platform, reputation scores of a user will increase. As the reputation score increases, the user will be given access to exclusive discounts and special offers that will not be available to all. Think of this as an upgrade. Referrals — Users who successfully refer new users to the platform are rewarded with tokens. Consider Uber’s refer all program; you invite your friend and you both receive a discount or an amount of AVA to use towards your next bookings. We do not expect mainstream adopters to take the token out of the platform. Special Offers — Users holding ‘X’ amount of AVA will be given access to exclusive discounts and special offers that will not be available to all. Think of this as an upgrade.

The improvements to focus on the Incentive Economy Business Model will;

Increase volume of AVA tokens held within the platform therefore increasing scarcity.

Users will receive a percentage of each booking in AVA token rewards.

Increases user’s adoption through gamification of incentives.

NOTE: These are the current utility events and over time will see many more added in-line with innovations enabled by the NOTA model. We do NOT hold tokens or any currency in Smart Contracts.

An example of an Incentive Economy Business Model

Consider when you save up Air-Miles, you gain points and are able to use them on additional extras on your flight bookings. The AVA token works in a similar way; however, AVA has a real-world value and can be used in-platform or on the limited network of Travala-associated distributed ledger platforms at the users’ discretion. The focus here is on mainstream adoption.

The diagram below highlights the in-flow of AVA from the open market (being used as a payment). Following the flow of the token, it is then used to grant X% giveback, fund referrals and other rewards as mentioned earlier within the article.

AVA token flow

What are the different payment methods?

1. Traditional (FIAT) Currencies — Credit cards, Paypal and many other local options. (These methods incur a standard 1% to 5% fee depending on the fee charged by the payment processor).

2. AVA Token — Once used by a consumer for booking, AVA tokens will be sent to the reserves to be used to power the in-platform token economy. We will pay the suppliers for bookings made with AVA via other revenue streams. (There are no fees for using the AVA token as payment).

3. Cryptocurrencies e.g. Bitcoin, Neo, Gas, Ethereum, LiteCoin, Dash, EOS, Stellar, BNB, XRP, TrueUSD. We are one of the a few projects worldwide that are able to tap into the these large communities so they can book their accommodation via Travala.com. (These methods incur a standard 0.5% to 1% fee depending on the fee charged by the payment processor).

Booking Commission on Travala.com

In order to make the business sustainable and competitive moving forward, we will adopt a proven revenue model. After extensive research, we feel that we can competitively move forward with an achievable goal of an average saving of 15% compared to mainstream OTA’s across our accommodation listings once we have integrated with all our new suppliers.

Business Plan — Page 21.

Some listings will be 50% cheaper, some listings will be 5% cheaper, some listings will be the same price and this is due to the dynamic rates and availability in the travel industry. Additional to the 15% on average discount enjoyed by the consumer Travala.com will incorporate its own commissions to operate, grow the platform and replenish the token reserves as-needed.

After analysing data samples from 10 global accommodation suppliers compared to major OTA’s this is our best route to market.

NOTE: An Average saving of 15%. This is not a fixed percentage but what the Travala proprietary listing technologies are built to deliver on average for each user engagement.

Marketing Direction

It is fair to say that our improvement prioritises focus on being able to competitively push our marketing efforts in line with mainstream OTA’s. Making sure costs are kept low for the end users regardless of the payment method they choose. While being heavily incentivised by our token economic model, thus increasing the Customer Lifetime Value of each user.

Here are some routes we will be researching over Q1 2019 before progressive implementation mid-2019 (once we reach Beta stage of development);