Luxury hotel group Kessler Collection has announced that it is allowing all its customers to pay for their hotel rooms with various cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, bitcoin cash, Ethereum and Dogecoin.
Kessler Collection Paves the Way for Crypto Payments
Since the day that the first bitcoin was mined in early 2009, it was deemed that cryptocurrencies would one day replace fiat. That they would ultimately rise to the occasion as payment methods and outdo regular money and credit cards, but unfortunately, this journey hasn’t really come full circle just yet despite being 12 years in the making.
One of the big things that has gotten in the way of cryptocurrencies being used for payments is their volatility. The price swings incurred by bitcoin and its altcoin cousins have caused huge financial losses for investors across the board, and companies don’t really want to risk that they themselves could lose money as well, and to an extent, we can’t really fault them for this.
Think about it… If you walk into a store right now with $50 worth of bitcoin that you use to pay for merchandise, but tomorrow the price of bitcoin goes down and that $50 becomes $35, the company has lost $15 while you still get to walk away with everything you bought. As a payment method, bitcoin and its digital companions didn’t quite have what it took in many firms’ minds, but now, as enterprises such as Uber and General Motors consider utilizing crypto as payment methods in the future, perhaps things are changing once and for all.
Kessler Collection is stationed throughout the United States, and has luxury establishments in areas such as Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Colorado and Alabama. In a statement, Kessler Collection chief financial officer Fravy Collazo explained:
This move will make it easier for guests travelling globally, both in time saved from going to a local currency exchange and in money saved with a lower exchange rate.
Aside from the above-mentioned cryptocurrencies, guests can also pay for their rooms using various stable currencies such as PAX, USDC, the Gemini Dollar and Binance USD.
While the move is considered a huge step forward in attaining legitimacy and mainstream status for bitcoin and digital currencies, some question how many people will really use crypto to purchase hotel stays – especially right now, when the price of the world’s number one digital asset by market cap has again surged to its all-time high of $57,000. As it stands, the big attitude is that crypto investors need to hodl as much as possible.
Are People Willing to Do This Right Now?
Thomas Perfumo – head of business operations and strategy at Kraken – says:
If you were optimizing for growing your investments, a better question is ‘why would you go on vacation if you can invest those funds in crypto?’
