Yesterday’s top-performing altcoin, NEM (XEM) cranked 20% on the announcement that it will be partnering with a popular online travel firm.

Crypto markets have taken a breather lately, with most altcoins pulling back slightly or continuing their consolidation. The majority are a percent or two in the red as the total cryptocurrency market capitalization shrunk by $6 billion.

NEM Leading The Way

NEM was the top-performing token in the top-forty yesterday and one of the very few that saw green. Gains are minor in the grand scheme of things but any gains are appreciated for altcoin holders right now.

From a Monday low of $0.036 (420 satoshis) the high-performance smart-asset blockchain token gained almost 20% to top out at $0.043 (505 sats) for the day. At the time of publishing, NEM has pulled back slightly to the $0.41 mark. NEM’s market cap has climbed to $380 million as it enters the top-thirty crypto assets, just ahead of VeChain.

The rare upward move has been driven by a partnership announcement with a leading travel firm. NEM’s XEM token will be integrated with the Travala platform to join twenty other crypto assets that the hotel booking platform supports.

Adoption in Action

Travala is a leading crypto-friendly accommodation booking service with over 2 million properties listed in 230 countries. It is also offering up to 40% discount to XEM holders when they book through the site using the tokens as payment.

Matt Luczynski, CEO of Travala, welcomed NEM investors:

“We are delighted to welcome NEM as a certified Travel partner and we look forward to XEM holders joining our crypto travel booking community.”

NEM CEO, Alex Tinsman, praised the partnership adding;

“Travala.com has long been a supporter of the crypto community and a valuable advocate for widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. We’re glad to be partnering with them to include XEM on their platform, further underlining our long-term message of scaling the technology for all institutions across all industries.”

The announcement added that the NEM Foundation is also launching the next iteration of its blockchain technology in an enterprise solution product.

The project, dubbed Catapult, represents a brand new technology stack with cutting edge features that have never been available on a decentralized system according to the blog post.

As is the case with most altcoins, continued developments and new partnerships have had little effect on long term token prices which, in NEM’s case, are still down 97% from their peak.