Blockchain-powered service LockChain.co that produces a technological solution and a decentralized plaza for making reservation without intermediaries has declared in its official blog that its alpha version marketplace has officially been started.
It is the first firm to challenge giants such as booking.com and airbnb.com with a blockchain based online travel booking app. The company relies on cutting out any commissions and directly connecting customers to owners through their unique Ethereum based LOC Travel engine. The engine utilizes smart contracts for the accomplishment of the bookings which will supply a free-to-use, trustless environment that defends both customers and the owners.
The announcement appeared not a long after the company has set partnerships with about 100,000 hotels around the world. The hotels are expected to be integrated and ready for booking by the end of February 2018.
“Airbnb.com and Booking.com charge on average 20% from each booking that is produced through their platform. Our plan is to utilize advanced blockchain technology and to take away any commissions. It is the right of the owner to receive the full sum of the money for the investment that they are making, and it is definitely the right of the traveler to be able to pay directly to owners for their travel experience. Some commissions with current established leaders can reach as high as 50%, which is unjust. 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. Placement sector is in a bad need of transparency.” ..says CEO of LockChain.co- Nikola Alexandrov
The marketplace launch is the result of broad development that started mid 2017, and is with “Alpha version” status, which means that is pending a lot of upgrades and improvements. Listing properties for owners is absolutely 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 supply an immediate real world app of a blockchain based technology. The company has almost 1,000 properties that are already equipped and have pricing of -18% when compared to Airbnb.
The firm takes into account a lot of lacks that blockchain technology currently has, which is why it is building a centralized app to act as a bridge between the blockchain technology and the travelers.
The placement market LOC tries to permeate offers a 500B opportunity and their penetration strategy is simole – thanks to the LOC token to offer much lower prices while preserving the user experience.
“2018 will be all about delivery and actual service adoption/utilization. Many ICO startups will fail because of the lack of legalization on their product. I believe we have a healthy 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 produce huge supply in tokens and hype their users before having anything vital as a service, which further puts those projects into danger as it falsely inflates their market caps.” – says CEO Nikola Alexandrov.
The LOC token has restricted 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 about +600% for the people that took part in the ICO. Despite this, the LOC Token has a market cap of only 15M on Coinmarketcap which certainly makes it an interesting choice.
