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Goliath online travel agency/booking website Expedia announced Wednesday that they are going to become the first major website in the travel industry to accept bitcoin for hotel bookings.
“This is one of those ideas that seemed to have sprung from three different places all at once,” said Michael Gulmann, vice president of global product at Expedia.
Company engineers and business developers were beginning to consider acceptance of the digital currency, as were customers requesting the website implement support for bitcoin payments.
For now, Expedia will be running a trial with bitcoin payments for hotels only.
“We want to start at a reasonable, small place,” says Gulmann to the Wall Street Journal. What happens with the hotel bookings will ultimately determined whether or not the company expands bitcoin payments to pay for flights and other types of bookings.
Expedia has teamed up with Coinbase for the acceptance, a San Francisco-based firm that allows businesses to instantly convert their bitcoin payments into fiat.
And that’s exactly what Expedia is planning to do. The company says they will not hold any bitcoin, but according to Gulmann, it’s not “a statement on bitcoin, pro or con.”
Expedia is just the latest company to turn to bitcoin payments — something they say has been done as another way to serve customers. Other big names include Overstock.com (who keeps 10 percent of bitcoin revenue in bitcoin and also has a partnership with Coinbase), DISH Network (who will start acceptance later this year, also working with Coinbase), and TigerDirect.
[textmarker color=”C24000″]Source[/textmarker] Wall Street Journal
