The price of hotels is often the biggest factor in the cost of a holiday, rivaled only by airfare costs. While hotels may seem pricey now, bear in mind how much hotel costs have reduced since the early days of the internet thanks to the rise of comparison sites and peer-to-peer accommodation. The rise of blockchain technology is set to reduce prices even further for customers.
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While Sites like Airbnb devote a lot of effort and resources towards combating untoward practices, which in turn drives prices higher, a new blockchain project called Concierge is aiming to use ledger and blockchain technology to reduce these costs by making untransparent behavior impossible.
Both hotels and customers partake in many questionable behaviors that lead to overall higher prices in the marketplace: hotels double booking rooms, guests booking and not showing up, bogus reviews, overcharging, fraudulent payment… the list goes on. This makes it necessary for centralized platforms to get involved to arbitrate and make sure things run smoothly.
The downsides of this involvement are that systems are more expensive, slower, and still prone to human error or bias. Platforms like Expedia or airbnb, credit card companies, and review sites are all prone to dishonest behaviour. But many of these problems could be easily remedied with trustless ledger and blockchain technology.
The Concierge platform is leveraging the speed of the NEO protocol in order to develop a system with 3 principal components. The marketplace is decentralized and allows hotel owners to easily and quickly add rooms to be displayed to customers. Bookings are created using smart contracts that stipulate the details of payment. And the whole transaction is enacted using the CGE token, which allows for fast and transparent settling of transaction amounts.
The broader strategy for the platform is to provide a means for all service providers to offer their travel and tourist products in a secure and transparent way. If Concierge.io takes off and achieves a critical mass, this will encourage travelers to use it for secondary services, especially tours and guided visiting. This is very compatible with the design of the platform, since services like guided tours vary widely in their quality and customer reviews are so important.
Because of the secure and transparent way reviews are placed on the platform, fake reviews (both positive and negative) will be eliminated, rewarding tour guides and tourist service providers that really do a good job.
The NEO protocol is among the fastest to settle of any token and has seen wide adoption among many business oriented crypto projects. For these reasons, it is hoped the NEO protocol will allow a greater level of efficiency for the Concierge platform even compared to traditional methods.
The CGE token is the central unit of value for the platform but the team behind it have designed the user experience so that transfers to and from fiat are easy and quick.
The team are raising funds to rollout their vision with the CGE token ICO starting on the 31 March.
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