Introduction
Travala.com is an online hotel and accommodation travel service provider that is similar to Expedia and booking.com. However, unlike the websites mentioned above, it is a cryptocurrency-friendly platform. It was founded in October 2017 under the name Concierge Global Limited and had its ICO for its CGE tokens. In May 2018, it was rebranded to Travala.com with its own native token called Travala or AVA for short.
Originally AVA was built on the NEO blockchain, however, in September 2019, it was announced that the token will migrate to Binance Chain (in other words, backed by Binance). Thus, the AVA Nep5 coins were converted to AVA Bep2. The initial total supply of AVA was 61,571,086 tokens; however, as the years progress, this supply will decrease to 40 million through a burn/repurchasing process. This will get rid of 35% of the current supply. The burn/repurchasing plan occurs every quarter and is based on 20% of Travala.com. Thus, the more bookings are made, the greater the revenue, the more tokens are burned. Currently, the company has already processed 4 burns, reducing the supply to approximately 61.18 million.
I encourage everyone to read the whitepaper of this project in order to understand why this platform is not like any other online booking website.
Website
The website currently has 4 languages, however, that will change this year, with more languages to be added. Travala.com provides a variety of payment methods, especially in the cryptocurrency field where you can book hotels with currencies such as swipe, crypto.com, utrust, monero, tron and so on. The credit card option is also available. From their monthly reports, we can see that the majority of the bookings (approximately 70%) are paid with cryptocurrencies. There are three cryptocurrency wallets on the exchange: the travala (AVA) token, BNB and BUSD, meaning you can store these three currencies on the website itself. The benefit of this is that there is a 10-minute window for you to pay for your bookings with crypto (mainly due to price volatility), or else the booking expires. Meaning transferring your funds from an exchange (instead of from the site directly) might not be ideal, as it takes longer for the transfer to occur. If the link does expire while you are transferring your cryptos from the exchange, you will most probably have to contact support.
Travala.com has a large selection of hotels, especially after its close collaboration with sites such as Booking and Expedia.com. It also has a flight search engine (Travelbybit); however, it is still a work in progress since most bonuses do not apply to flights yet. Another section that will be arriving soon is the activities section. There is also a mobile version for Travala.com which makes it easy to use on the go.
Although some work is still required, it is definitely improving, especially with all the feedback coming back from the telegram group.
Support:
1- There is live chat support that was quick and helpful when I used it.
2- Make sure to join the telegram group as the people there are extremely helpful and provide a lot of information and extra links.
Current Smart Program and Benefits (January 2021)
One of the main features that stand out for Travala.com is its SMART program. This program is used to incentivize people to buy and hold on to its tokens, obtaining great benefits. The current program is shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Current SMART program
Let us look at what each column describes:
1- The AVA smart program consists of 5 levels (1 to 5). Each level has its own unique bonuses (Smart Level).
2- In order to obtain the benefits of that certain level, you must hold/stake/lock a certain amount of AVA into the system (Amount of AVA). Once locked, you will have to maintain a locking period of 30 days before unlocking. Furthermore, if you were to decide to unlock it, you will have to wait another 30 days to lock it into the smart program again.
3- The next column (Smart Discount) describes the discount you will obtain on the hotel you will be booking. This process is done automatically.
For example, if you are smart level 1 and the price of the hotel is $300 for the full stay, you will get a 1% discount and end up paying $297. However, please remember not all hotels get a smart discount, only hotels with the smart icon, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Hotel with Smart Offer
4- The Smart Loyalty is a cashback on the price of the hotel, after discount, that you will get in the native token (AVA). This smart loyalty cashback is provided after the hotel stay.
Conclusion from point 3+4
When you come to book a $300 hotel and you are Smart level 1, you will get 1% Smart Discount, making the price you pay $297 and then a cashback of 2% in AVA token on the $297, giving you a $5.94 cashback in AVA.
5- Next, we look at the Smart Bonus, which is 24% of the AVA you hold or stake in the smart program. This is like an incentive to make sure that people keep their AVA tokens staked, thus reducing liquidity (reducing the amount of circulating AVA and keeping the price high). This 24% is divided into two parts- 12% paid in AVA and 12% paid in travel credits, where 1 travel credit is equal to $1. This is paid monthly.
For example, if you are a smart level 5, that means you have 5000 staked AVA, 24% would be 1200 a year, where 600 is in AVA and 600 AVA in travel credits. This means that every month you will receive 50 AVA tokens and travel credits equivalent to 50 AVA.
Just to expand on the travel credits to avoid confusion, if AVA is at a price of $0.5, then you get travel credits equivalent to 50 AVA, meaning you get $25 travel credits. If the price of AVA is $2, then you get $100 travel credits.
6- Lastly, Pay Full with AVA, is a further incentive in order to utilize the AVA token. Whenever you pay the full price with the AVA token you get 3% discount on the hotel’s original price.
Brief Historical Overview of the SMART Program
1- In March 2019, the Smart program went live. Involving mostly the SMART discount and SMART loyalty
2- In January 2020, the Smart Bonus was introduced. Originally as:
3- In June 2020, the Smart Bonus was changed to:
4- In August 2020, Travala.com announced that hotel bookings made with AVA token will receive a 3% discount on the booking’s original price.
5- From December 2020, Travala improved the program further, where the SMART bonus was increased from 12% APY to 24% APY. However, the extra 12% would be provided in travel credits. This is the most current form.
Although the program was changed 3 times within 2020 alone, this is quite understandable since it is a new program and needs to be adjusted and adapted till it benefits both the company and the consumer.
One thing to be wary of is the maximum amount of AVA that can be staked by a single person is 5000 AVA. If you make a second account and stake another 5k (for yourself), you might get banned. One person, one SMART program. This gives everyone the opportunity to benefit from such a program.
Comparing it to other booking websites:
There are two large companies that own the majority of the online travel booking websites, and these are the Expedia Group Inc. which owns famous websites like Hotels.com and Expedia.com, and Booking Holdings Inc., which own sites such as Booking.com and Agoda.com. From my experience, Hotels.com is the best from all the sites I have tried.
The question is, is it worth it to enter into the Travala.com SMART program, considering that the other hotel websites do not require you to stake anything, and you get discounts on them as well. If yes, then which SMART level would be best?
I will compare Travala.com to Hotels.com for simplification, plus as mentioned before, Hotels.com was the best amongst the other online booking websites. When it comes to which site has cheaper hotel prices, it does not matter much, as most, if not all (including Travala.com) provide price guarantee. I have tried price guarantee with Hotels.com several times, and it has always worked. So even if Travala.com offers lower prices (before discount), this can be price guaranteed easily by other booking websites.
Hotels.com has a reward program that consists of booking 10 hotel nights and receiving one hotel night (that consisted of the average of the 10 hotel nights) for free. That means if you booked 10 hotel nights for $100 each, you would get a free hotel night in the value of $100. In other words, Hotels.com gave a 10% discount on all hotel stays (divide the $100 into 10 nights, and you get $10 discount for each night). If we were to consider the smart discount and loyalty program of Travala.com alone, then compared to Hotels.com it is definitely lacking; especially for the first 4 levels, though not so much for level 5. However, this would improve, if you paid with AVA as you would get 3% additional discount. Thus, SMART level 4 and 5 would be much better in this category.
One thing I would like to highlight is that Hotels.com offers the single free night after booking 10 night, while Travala.com gives you the benefits instantaneously. However, I would still consider the first three tiers for this category to not be as good. This is because Hotels.com and expedia.com, from my experience, provide 10% discount coupons several times a year. Thus, you could benefit from the immediate benefit from the other hotel sites too.
The trickiest part to assess though, is the price of the AVA token. Depending on when you bought it and whether it increases in price, will determine whether the SMART bonus will be of great benefit to you or not. My personal opinion is that an AVA price below $2 is definitely worthwhile. However, I must also admit that according to me SMART levels 1 and 2 are definitely not worth it, the same goes for 3. If the price of AVA were to fall off a cliff, I would still be quite happy being in SMART program 4 and 5.
Another thing that might affect the usefulness of the SMART program is the future prospects of the platform itself. What other benefits might be included, such as incentivizing the addition of good reviews about the hotels.
Issues:
1- The first issue, although that is mostly me being hyper-critical, is that Travala advertises that you get 10% discount on hotel bookings with a smart level 5, when in fact, you get 9.75%. That is mainly because the Smart Loyalty of 5% is based on the already discounted hotel. The same goes for all other levels, where the percentage will be minutely lower when combining both smart discount and smart loyalty.
2- The second issue relates to the crypto market itself; volatility. The Smart Loyalty + 12% of the SMART bonus, are all provided in the native AVA token. Although it is necessary to provide utility for the token, it still provides a risk if the price of AVA were to drop significantly.
For example, if you are smart level 5 and you book a hotel for $100 you would get a 5% discount, reducing the price to $95 and you would get another 5% of AVA cashback, which would be $4.75, assuming that the price of 1 AVA is $0.95, then you would receive 5 AVA. Let us say the price of AVA now drops by half its value. That would mean your 5 AVA are now worth approximately $2.3. In other words, your 5% Smart Loyalty was much lower as an outcome.
3- As shown above, Travala can change the smart program benefits as it pleases, whenever it likes. Thankfully, for now and unlike other projects, the team still appreciates its investors and the people that believe in it. Furthermore, the company is profitable, netting more than $1 million in revenue in December 2020 alone and still has several projects and benefits in sight. Furthermore, the company has had several successful fundraisers, such as the recent Crowdcube funding, which raised more than $1.7 million
4- When it comes to the travel credits. The only thing that worries me is whether it will be sustainable if the AVA token were to increase in price. For example, a $10 token would mean that the company needs to provide 800k monthly in travel credits to its smart 5 users. Options around this could be capping the travel credits to a certain amount, so you can maximum get 50 travel credits a month or making brackets, for example if the AVA price is between 0-$5, then the normal program is in progress and any other extra dollar in price of AVA is half the credits.
For example, if AVA price is $6, according to the current system, you should get 300 travel credits. However, with the bracket system you would get $250 for the $5 and the remaining 50 travel credits from the extra dollar would be worth 25 travel credits. In other words, 275 travel credits.
Technology Future Outlook:
1- Travala.com merged in May with TravelbyBit, which is a flight booking website. However, work is still required in order to provide better prices and improve the flight options. Furthermore, the SMART program does not apply still to TravelbyBit. In 2021 these things will most probably improve.
2- Providing reviews on confirmed hotel booking might be rewarded with AVA. However, it is unknown whether it will act like a tipping service, where someone who finds your review beneficial tips you with some AVA, or whether writing a good review alone would get you a certain amount of AVA.
3- Furthermore, Travala.com might add airbnb style rooms, where normal people can offer their rooms for cryptocurrencies. The activities feature will also be implemented soon, increasing the services it provides.
4- Other features to improve the website, such as implementing more languages and providing more cryptocurrencies with which you can pay for your bookings.
Price Future Outlook:
Just to start off with some numbers.
1- As of January 2021, the market cap of the token is about 40 million dollars, with a rank of 248 according to coingecko.
2- It has a circulating supply of about 46 million of which 22% are locked in the SMART program.
3- The total starting supply of AVA was 61.57 million and after 4 rounds of burns, is currently standing at 61.18 million.
4- The current price is above $1 as of January 10, 2021.
For AVA to even poke its head into the top 100 cryptos, it needs to increase 4x in value. However, a more short-term realistic goal would be for it to rank in the top 150, which would require only a 2x, I think both goals should be achievable, especially the latter, considering everything that is going on with token. A third of the total supply of the tokens are locked, and I am assuming they will remain locked for quite some time, since the benefits are huge, especially if you entered at a low price, meaning that liquidity is reduced. This percentage will only increase as more and more tokens are burned. Also, it most probably will need to go higher than 2x as the marketcap of the top coins increases with time.
Helpful strategy
This is just a helpful strategy for those that wish to take profit along the way, until they obtain their original investment.
1- The incentive AVA collected from the locked SMART program, or cashback from hotel bookings, can be converted into travel credits for future bookings. A good way to do this would be to wait for AVA to reach a certain target price and buy a $50 dollar travel credit. In other words that would be the strategy to take some of your profit. Transferring it to an exchange and converting it to a stablecoin and so forth is too much of a hassle, plus you have fees along the way.
2- Use your travel credit; the earlier the better. I do not know how long 1 travel credit will be equal to $1. If AVA were to go to $10, it is hard for me to comprehend how the company would provide us with $800k travel credits per month (considering only the 1600 smart 5 customers). Thus, I am assuming that when AVA goes to high prices, the travel credits are either stopped and changed with something else, or they are reduced. Reduction of travel credits has been observed several times in the aviation industry.
Referral Link:
If I was able to convince you to join the Travala community, you may use my link, where we both get $25 dollars after you register and book for $200 or more. It's safe to say that I believe this is an excellent project and I really enjoy the team. Please read the whitelist of the paper and know more about the team.
https://www.travala.com/ref/TI7W1A
