Blockchain-powered service LockChain.co that creates a technological solution and a decentralized marketplace for property booking without intermediaries has announced in its official blog that its alpha version marketplace has officially been launched.
It is the first company that challenges giants such as booking.com and airbnb.com with its blockchain based online travel booking application. The company relies on cutting out any commissions and directly linking clients to hosts through their unique Ethereum based LOC Travel engine. The engine will utilize smart contracts for the execution of the bookings which will provide a free-to-use, trustless environment that protects both clients and the hosts.
The announcement comes shortly after the company has struck partnerships with around 100,000 hotels around the world. The hotels are expected to be integrated and ready for booking by the end of February 2018.
“Booking.com and Airbnb.com charge on average 20% from each booking that is made through their platform. Our plan is to utilize advanced blockchain technology and to cut out any commissions. It is the right of the host to receive the full amount of the money for the investment that they are making, and it is certainly the right of the traveler to be able to pay directly to hosts for their travel experience. Some commissions with current established leaders can reach as high as 50%, which is unfair. Nobody wants to pay that kind of money to someone who is just a middleman and does not add value to the actual travel experience. Accommodation sector is in a bad need of transparency.” ..says CEO of LockChain.co- Nikola Alexandrov
The marketplace launch is the result of extensive development that began mid-2017 and is with “Alpha version” status, which means that is pending a lot of upgrades and improvements. Listing properties for hosts is completely free, and booking them in the native LOC token is free of any commissions.
Unlike many other projects, LockChain.co is one of the few companies that provides an immediate real-world application of a blockchain based technology. The company has close to 1,000 properties that are already integrated and have pricing of -18% when compared to Airbnb.
The accommodation market LOC tries to penetrate offers a 500B opportunity and their penetration strategy is straightforward – to offer much lower prices thanks to the LOC token.
“2018 will be all about delivery and actual service adoption/utilization. Many ICO startups will fail because of the lack of validation on their product. I believe we have a sound approach in this regard since we aimed for a reasonable ICO, and a practical business validation. If there is value in the market cap, it should be the result of a product and not of the FOMO effect. Tempted from high market caps, ICOs tend to create huge supply in tokens and hype their users before having anything viable as a service, which further puts those projects into danger as it artificially inflates their market caps. “ – says CEO Nikola Alexandrov.
The LOC token has limited supply of only 9.25M circulating tokens, and a total supply of 18.5M LOC and traded on exchanges such as HitBTC, Etherdelta, Mercatox, Gatecoin, and Yobit. It has experienced an increased in value of approximately +600% for the people that participated in the ICO. Even so, the LOC Token has a market cap of only 15M on Coinmarketcap which definitely makes it an interesting pick.
