A Ryanair or an Easyjet ticket as well as tickets from almost 600 other airlines can now be bought with bitcoin through Destinia, a Spanish online travel agency.

Destinia, a major Spanish online travel agency established in 2001, offers airplane and train tickets, hotel stays and car rentals. It started accepting bitcoin payments in January 2014 with the help of BitPay. However, up until now it was not possible to use cryptocurrency when buying a low cost flight. A bitcoin enthusiast complained on Reddit: “Destinia offers Ryanair flights… But I can't find the option to pay with Bitcoin :( At the end always requests your credit card number.”

It seems that the bitcoin option was not displayed because low cost airlines only accepted direct credit card payments. According to the agency’s site, “All of Destinia’s online products may be purchased in bitcoins except for some hotels that only admit payment at reception and some flight where the airline only accepts credit card payments.” Everything has now changed, claims the company blog. “Responding to an ever increasing demand”, Destinia now allows its clients to pay in bitcoin for low cost flights.

The company claims that this option “is not permitted by any other online travel agency”. However, a Lithuanian travel agency, Greitai.lt, also allows bitcoin payments for low-cost flights.

Destinia has all the reasons to be happy with its bitcoin-paying customers, according to the interview given by a company spokesperson to Coindesk. Bitcoin payments are less numerous than a year ago because of the competition from other bitcoin-accepting online companies like Expedia but there is still a bitcoin payment almost every day. The cryptocurrency is especially popular among customers from Spain, Germany, Argentina and Sweden. Finally, bitcoiners spend €16 more per transaction than ordinary users.

It could be suspected that bitcoin users spent more just because they could not buy tickets for low cost. However, as CoinFox recently wrote, TigerDirect says the same. A Florida-based online computer and consumer electronics store that has been accepting payments in cryptocurrency since January 2014, just like Destinia, says bitcoin-paying customers spend 30% more than others. It says accepting bitcoin has been a “fantastic experience”. However, not every bitcoin-accepting business is so enthusiastic. For instance, Expedia reported a 40% decrease in bitcoin purchases and told that with some merchants it amounts to 90%.

Alexey Tereshchenko