To the average end-user or casual consumer, it might seem like we’re all spoiled for choice with the number of travel booking sites available online.

With very few people not using online booking platforms to sort their annual holiday, or casual travel itinerary, names like Expedia, Booking.com, Trivago, TripAdvisor and Hotel.com have become familiar.

All these sites claim to offer the ‘best deal’ for people booking their accommodation, flights and excursions, but when you look a little closer, you may something surprising.

Price stranglehold

If you were to compare prices on eight booking sites, the chances are that your results will only show one or two prices at most. With all the sites claiming to offer the best deal, this doesn’t appear to make sense.

Scratch beneath the surface, however, and you’ll find that although there are many sites, brands and platforms, they’re owned by five major conglomerates. This allows for price and rates control, as well as potentially biased reviews.

Complex algorithms

The system of complex algorithms effectively controls hotel and travel prices, even on secondary websites. This includes the high-low price point, the profit margin and supply. Even as start-ups emerge, they’re quickly swallowed by larger companies, leading us to the current situation where four corporations own many of the major online booking platforms.

Here are some of the key online booking sites and their owner. Obviously, this doesn’t cover every single one, but these highlights demonstrate the state of the market.

Expedia Inc — Owns: Expedia.com, Hotwire.com, Hotels.com, TripAdvisor.com and its subsidiaries, which include SeatGuru.com, AirfareWatchdog.com, SmarterTravel.com, CruiseCritic.com and IndependentTraveler.com. Sabre Holdings Inc — Owns: IgoUgo.com, LastMinute.com, Travelocity.com and a massive reservations system used by the entire travel industry. Travelocity also powers the search engine for Yahoo! Travel. Orbitz Worldwide — Owns: CheapTickets.com, RatestoGo.com. and Orbitz.com Booking Holdings Inc — Owns Travelweb.com, Lowestfare.com, booking.com and Priceline.com.

Essentially, while it looks and feels like there is almost endless choice and that it’s worth shopping around to find the best price, it’s unlikely that any single platform will help customers in real terms.

And that’s where we come in.

Breaking the mould

Travala breaks the mould completely and offers real choice and real value. By utilising blockchain technology on the NEO platform, we can provide a booking platform that effectively dispenses with unfair fees, charges and middlemen, and links the end user to the service provider with as few steps as possible.

Reviews can’t be biased or faked, as they are stored in the blockchain ledger and cannot be altered. This gives real transparency to the end-user as they can be sure that all reviews reflect true customer experience and aren’t controlled behind the scenes.

A whole new world

Blockchain technology may be synonymous only with cryptocurrency in many peoples’ minds, but it is increasingly being seen as a whole new way of building services across many industries.

The travel industry in particular is ready for change. We believe it should change and needs to change. And we have the expertise, experience and, crucially, the expertise within blockchain technology to come up with a platform that works for the end-user and the service provider.

Connect with me via;