The worlds of luxury travel and crypto are beginning to fuse even deeper into one another as several hotels out there have announced plans to accept digital currency payments for stays and other services.
Hotels Seem to Like Crypto a Lot More
The move is pushing the goals of bitcoin and its digital counterparts closer to being achieved. What many people likely forget is that while bitcoin and many of its crypto cousins have taken on either speculative or even hedge-like statuses in recent years, many of them were initially designed to serve as payment tools. They were built to push checks, credit cards, and fiat currencies to the side, but this has been a relatively slow journey given the volatility that continues to drag them down.
It is extremely hard to understand when bitcoin and its crypto family will go up or down when it comes to their prices. Many stores and companies have been reluctant to say “yes” when it comes to accepting crypto payments for this reason, and to a degree, we can’t blame them.
Consider the following scenario: someone walks into a store and buys $50 worth of merchandise with bitcoin. For one reason or another, the store doesn’t trade the BTC into fiat right away and about 24 hours go by. From there, the price of BTC goes down and that $50 becomes $40. The customer gets to keep everything he or she bought, but the store has lost money in the end. Is this a fair situation? Not everyone thinks so.
That’s what makes enterprises like these hotels so important. They understand the initial purposes of bitcoin and digital currencies and are trying to transform them into usable tools that everyday people can benefit from.
A Rewards-Based NFT Program?
Daryl Kelly – manager of Chestertons Barbados and CEO of the non-fungible token (NFT) company LTD.INC – commented in an interview:
So, in short, there are more people willing to spend their crypto for a variety of purposes, including when it comes to travel and stays at higher-end hotels… So, for example, this could involve a five-star resort in the Maldives issuing exclusive NFTs to its most loyal customers, who can in turn use those NFTs as you would imagine an airline using points systems for frequent flyer miles. This would mean that holders of that NFT could check into the hotel, scan the digital asset in their wallet, and immediately receive discounted uses for spas or night activities. In fact, the use cases of NFTs as digital signifiers of exclusive membership to whatever hotel or resort could be as big as, if not bigger than, general payments using crypto.
Among the global hotels that have agreed to accept crypto payments is the Chedi Andermatt, a five-star hotel located in Andermatt, Switzerland.
