Blockchain-based Airbnb Rival Strikes Partnerships with 100,000 Hotels Worldwide

LockChain is set to enable guests to book a place to stay for reasonably lower prices while enabling property owners and hotels to rent their premises globally without having to pay to third-party services for connecting them to the customers. By utilizing blockchain technology, the company cuts out all the middlemen that increase the end prices of rooms and rented premises.

“Most people don’t realize this, but when you book a stay through booking.com or AirBnB, between 20% and 30% of your money goes out to middlemen without adding any value to the actual travel experience. Thanks to advanced blockchain technology, we are able to change that to 0% and give that value back to the travelers and hosts,” LockChain CEO Nikola Alexandrov said.

Additionally, LockChain is the world’s only project to have listed a president of a EU member state as its advisor.

The decentralized platform uses Ethereum virtual machine to build its booking engine which is free-to-use and open-source for any other applications. Simultaneously, LockChain offers a publicly available blockchain-powered marketplace that has already gone live.

Blockchain technology secures bookings through the use of smart contracts and ensures direct interaction between the involved parties. End users, at the same time, may enjoy a web or app-based interface to facilitate their user-friendly experience.

LockChain is the world’s first blockchain-based accommodation marketplace to offer travel bookings services with zero fees and lack of intermediaries to the ever-thriving industry that is currently estimated at $500+ billion. According to the project’s blog post, test runs of the service’s infrastructure show that the prices for the same rooms can go down by as much as 20%.

“Through strategic partnership deals that were made in December, we’ve secured hotel inventory that is close to 100,000 hotels with some of the most reputable accommodation suppliers in the world. The inventory has global coverage,” the project’s blog post reads.

The announcement followed a successful token sale that had raised 10,500 ETH.  The total supply of LOC is limited to only 18.5m tokens, which are already traded on popular cryptocurrency exchanges such as HitBTC, Etherdelta, and Mercatox.

The team currently has a live alpha version marketplace with several hundred properties located mostly in the UK, the USA, and Europe. The next major update on their marketplace is scheduled for January 15th and will be opening the platform for hosts registration, property listing, availability/calendar management and many additional features.