60% of orders paid with cryptocurrency! Accommodation platform Travala now accepts payment in US dollar stablecoin USDT

The accommodation booking platform Travala, which has always been friendly towards cryptocurrencies, recently announced that it will accept the US dollar stablecoin USDT (ERC20) as a payment option.

Offering Multiple Cryptocurrency Payment Options

Travala first started accepting the Gemini dollar (GUSD) launched by Gemini Exchange in December last year. On January 10th, Travala announced via its official Blog the addition of Tether (USDT) as a payment option. Travala CEO Matt Luczynski stated:

Part of our mission is to offer users a wide selection of the most well-known and commonly used cryptocurrencies, so integrating USDT onto Travala.com is a meaningful step for us.

According to a report, Travala also accepts major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, BNB, XLM, ADA, and their native token AVA.

CoinPayments, a cryptocurrency payment service provider, Sean Mackay noted:

In the past, we would see merchants accepting Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and converting them to USDT to avoid volatility, now we see payments being made directly in USDT.

Continuous Growth in Booking Business

Travala's focus on booking accommodations with cryptocurrencies seems to be a viable business model. Since January last year, their business has been steadily growing. According to their official data, total booking revenue in December increased by over 33.5% year-over-year.

Furthermore, in December, 60% of the total bookings were made with cryptocurrencies. Among them, Bitcoin accounted for the highest at 28%, followed by Travala's native token AVA at 9%, while credit card and PayPal payments still made up 37%.

On November 25th last year, Travala announced a partnership with the mainstream booking platform Booking.com. This service allows users to book any hotel on the Booking.com platform and pay with cryptocurrencies.

According to a previous ABM report, Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel believes that while cryptocurrencies will ultimately be "widely accepted," the current process for crypto payments is still too complex and needs a more seamless user experience.

From the website traffic perspective, Travala's diverse payment options have not been a panacea, with very low usage rates. The traffic scale is still significantly different from Booking.com (420 million visits in 2019 vs. 82,000 visits). With the addition of the USDT payment option, its popularity remains to be seen.

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