As the cryptosphere heads towards the final quarter of 2018, we have seen the efficiencies of blockchain technology drive growth and innovation in various spheres - from trading to finance to gaming to shipping, and now even the travel industry.
One such project that’s forging the way ahead in the travel marketplace and leveraging the benefits and advantages of blockchain technology is Tripio. Right from the get-go, Tripio has made a strong statement by being one of the top 3 projects that won the voting round to be listed on Huobi Global’s exchange HADAX 2.0(Huobi Autonomous Decentralised Asset Exchange). In fact, Tripio didn’t just achieve its target vote, it exceeded it by over 50%. Now that shows some strong support behind the project by the Huobi Global community and HT holders. Given this overwhelming response, I decided to take a deeper look into Tripio and see what the hype was all about.
An Overview of Tripio
I have seen other similar projects in the space - Travala (AVA) come to mind, I even remember Bee Token and a few other obscure ones. But after considerable research, I’ve come to learn that Tripio is the real deal when it comes to the Travel marketplace of the future. It aims to bridge global customers with service providers all across the world by leveraging the decentralized network capabilities that only blockchain technology can provide. This will help build more secure and immutable and trustless connections between customers and providers to create a superior ecosystem unlike any other.
Apart from superior tech and a great team… it has some solid numbers that are honestly quite amazing putting Tripio in a league of its own.
The Airbnb Killer?
To begin with, Tripio provides access to over 450,000 hotels, lodgings and homestays in several countries across the globe. And that’s not all, aside from the vast offering and great choices the platform currently averages a daily booking volume of over 300. Now those are some solid figures.
At this rate, I believe Tripio is not only on its way to compete with AirBnb but outright bury it. With a platform like Tripio, customers wouldn’t think twice gives the savings, services and security that Tripio can offer. And that’s not just a lofty claim. Superior tech aside, Tripio aims to tackle some key problems in the travel marketplace industry through innovation and provides some impeccable solutions.
Tripio’s Strengths
By leveraging the powers of the blockchain, Tripio can help reduce transactional and operational costs in travel industries, as well as improve customer experience in their respective products and services. Using their platform, a service provider can publish their custom service terms and conditions using smart contracts. From the moment a purchase initiates to the end of the travel, every step along the way can be enforced and monitored by smart contracts. If disputes arise, Tripio provides dispute resolution by means of community self- government mechanisms.
The Tripio ecosystem along with all its features including the The Tripio dApp and the Tripio Protocol are powered by TRIO - the Tripio ERC-20 token. Customers may use Tripio dApps directly. At the same, any third-party may build its own dApp by leveraging the open Ethereum protocols and TRIO.
Travel Marketplace Problems And Tripio’s Solution
The Problems
The tradition travel industry has its fair share of problems. Although Airbnb maybe a great business, it does have a lot of issues under the hood which needs addressing. These problems with traditional models range from trust and payment issues like credit risk between suppliers and users as well as defaulting on payments, etc. Then there’s the issue of fraudulent and manipulated comments in order to dishonestly promote certain offerings. And if that’s not bad enough, there’s the middleman and their high commissions. Let’s take a look at the issue and then see what solutions Tripio has up their sleeve.
Credit risk between suppliers and users
There is an ever-increasing and nearly endless demand for travel and tourism. However, the traditional system relies heavily on trust between customers and hotels or landlords and tenants which has been placed upon third parties like Airbnb. And that’s where the problem arises because these systems cannot entirely and successfully verify suppliers, landlords and tenants in the process of pursuing a high commission and the credit data also cannot be shared to lower credit risk. This is an untransparent system that cannot guarantee credit standing and leads to problems such as varied instances of situations deviating from credit rules.
Fake comments/reviews
What’s the first thing that you do when you make a decision about traveling or living in a new hotel? Yes, you guessed right - its reviews. The kind that you read on sites like tripadvisor and Airbnb. High-quality help customers make decisions and also help hotels and accommodations justify prices. However, a negative trend seemed to occur where people would purposely make negative comments on hotels and give bad reviews with malicious intent. These serve only to damage the reputation of hotels in the ecosphere which is currently largely centralized. For the sake of dealing with negative comments, many hotels try to improve their rankings through fake comments and counterfeiting order forms of their own. And so, a vicious cycle of negative comments and counterfeiting order forms has been formed on online reservation applications. This does not serve the customer well either because the reviews aren’t authentic and he cannot make a good decision. This is a key problem that Tripio aims to solve, but we’ll delve into that a little later.
High middleman fees
Because of their market penetration and high recall value, the fees or commission charged by middlemen in the travel marketplace are usually very high. For instance, in this centralized system of tourism and travel accommodations, the charge proportion of commission is currently at an all-time high. This is evinced in the fact that the commission of OTA applications like Airbnb is about 15% to 20% while sharing short-rented application can charge anywhere between 10% to 30% as commission. Through the efficiencies of the blockchain, Tripio aims to tackle this issue and significantly reduce commissions, This reduction would be drastic and translate to far higher savings by customers.
Tripio’s Solutions
Decentralised data on customers and service providers
In the traditional system as well as on Tripio, service providers, as well as users, require Know Your Customer (KYC) formalities to take place. However, there exists a stark difference between the two… this is because KYC on traditional platforms is a complicated task. As such, most service providers use archaic methods like handwriting customer information as well as information about transactions. This leaves this data open to the risk of theft, loss or negligence constantly.
Now here’s where Tripio can make a difference. Since Tripio uses asymmetrical cryptography to encrypt identity information and store them on an Interplanetary File System (IPFS), authorized parties may access identity information through smart contracts only under specified instances or situations. For example, upon signage of service contract between service provider and customer, one party may access the other’s identity information. Here, the service provider may grant access to part or all of its company information to all visitors.
Anti-cheating facility based on AI
Now, let’s take a look at how Tripio can solve the problem of fake comments and malicious reviews. As I’ve stated earlier, this is an issue can that lead to a malignant ecosystem and perpetuate a lot of negativity. I believe customers stand to lose out the most as they cannot rely on information to find and won’t be able to access authentic information.
Here’s where blockchain technology and AI can help. Along with the development of artificial intelligence based on machine learning, it has been verified that the context classification model represented by Bag Of Words (BOW) can effectively recognize false comments. However, artificial intelligence anti-cheating cannot achieve the maximum effect in the centralized system. This is because in the interest of data preservation and profit these provides will not leave their data open to sharing. This is why trusted model training data cannot be formed through a complete users' behavior chain.
Tripio will be able to analyse data securely and efficiently because of its decentralised nature and establish an artificial intelligence anti-cheating model through Intact Footprint Records. Instances of cheating and malicious intent such as fake reviews will be penalized with reducing credit integral. Even comments and reviews from users with low credit scores will be relegated downwards in systems that reflect the provider’s credits.
No commissions on Tripio - only a 1-3% currency conversion fee
The part about Tripio that seals the deal for me is that there are no commissions on the platform. This is not the case in traditional models as I’ve stated before because there are a large number of layers of middlemen. This means that about 20% of the value of the transaction is eaten up in the form of listing fees, settlement fees, currency conversion fees, etc. This causes a dent in both the pocket of the customer as well as hurts the service provider’s margins.
On Tripio, there is no need of a middleman and therefore no need for these extra costs when the transactions are done using TRIO tokens. And even in the case of other payment methods, Triio only charges a miniscule 1% to 3% fee for currency conversion. Long story short, NO COMMISSION! And more savings.
A Great Idea Is Always Backed
Tripio has massive potential to disrupt the travel marketplace and therefore the idea has secured backing from a number of institutions and organisations like OK Blockchain Capital, Block VC, INBlockchain, Genesis Capital, FreeSFund, Ceyuan Ventures, Node Capital and TRON. Let’s take a look at a couple of these backers:
Genesis
Genesis capital is a leading professional investment banking and consulting institute found by Sun and Sparten. With their resources in the blockchain industry, they are dedicated to discovering and serving the finest blockchain projects. Their motto is “We always have faith, but never cease to doubt.”
TRON
With Justin Sun at its helm, TRON refers to itself as “an ambitious project dedicated to the establishment of a truly decentralized Internet and its infrastructure.” On their website, it states that “The current TRON team radiates out from Beijing to Seoul, Tokyo, San Francisco and many other countries and regions, totaling more than 100 members. The technological backbones of TRON have experienced blockchain enthusiasts who were previously employed by internet giants such as Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu.” TRON has a massive following in China and is quickly emerging as a leading blockchain… a great backer for Triopio especially considering that their current transaction throughput is 2000 TPS. I believe can add value to Tripio and Tripio can leverage this backing to its fullest potential going forward.
What do you think about TRIPIO? Would you invest? Do you think that TRIPIO will bring about a revolution to the travel industry?
Final Thoughts
I firmly believe that Tripio will bring about a revolution in the travel industry. The benefits that the Tripio platform and TRIO have to offer are just too great to ignore especially by established players like Airbnb. The efficiencies, transparency, and savings that Tripio will help bring about will act as a boost to the space and instill more confidence in service providers and customers. As the word gets out and positive sentiment spreads, more users will flock to the platform and boost its growth in the long run. This, I believe, will lead to a significant appreciation in the value of TRIO over time. That’s why I’ll be making an investment in TRIO. I will err on the side of caution, however, in the short term as I believe that the market sentiment doesn’t favor this. In the mid to long term, I’ll be investing in TRIO. It has already proven itself by winning the vote on HADAX 2.0 and I believe that their success story will only get better going forward.
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