Three Web3 Travel Tech Startups

A few weeks ago I contacted DTravel, Xeniapp and Weyout, three travel startups trying new models around blockchain, web3 and creator economy.  These are the questions I asked:

1. Brief description

2. What is the problem or the unmet need that you trying to solve?

3. Who should be happiest and who should be most worried about what you are bringing to market?

4. What stage of development¹ are you?

5. Which are the specific metrics/KPI that you are most closely watching?

6. Any metrics/traction that you can share?

7. What new element(s) are you introducing that address some of the characteristics and possibilities enabled by Web3 models and blockchain technology?

8. Will you be compensating early users/partners/contributors to your platform with tokens? How so?

9. Funding status.  How are you approaching your fundraising needs (traditional VC, angels, tokens, etc...)

Here are their replies to these nine questions.

1. DTravel

1.1 Brief description of DTravel

Dtravel is a decentralized, global home sharing community that facilitates accommodation discovery, bookings and payments, with lower fees than other home sharing platforms. 

Community members are able to make and receive payments with traditional currencies and popular cryptocurrencies, including the utility token that powers Dtravel: TRVL.

But we’re much more than just a home sharing platform. Dtravel is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO): a community-owned and governed ecosystem that operates for the benefit of its community members, composed of hosts, guests, contributors and TRVL token holders.

The TRVL token represents stakeholder membership in the Dtravel DAO and enables participation in governance and voting activities that influence how the Dtravel platform is managed.

Dtravel is the first of many planned use cases within the TRVL ecosystem. We’ve recently acquired the TRVL.com domain name and are creating a stand-alone brand for the world’s ultimate travel token.

1.2. What is the problem or the unmet need that DTravel is trying to solve?

Web 2.0 enabled a new kind of network to thrive, connecting a two sided marketplace that had never before had the ability to connect and engage. However, web 2.0 networks are limited by their corporate structure and objectives to maximize shareholder returns. This has led to the misalignment of values, purpose and power between platforms and their users who ultimately drive platform growth and value.

Host challenges

• Extraction imperative from Web 2.0 platforms means high fees and misaligned incentives

• Have no say in governance despite being closest to the platform and customer experience

• Have little economic participation outside of booking transactions despite creating the majority of value in Web 2.0 platforms

Guest challenges

• Because Web 2.0 platforms charge hosts high fees, guests pay more than they should

• Have limited payment options including no option for cryptocurrency payment

• Are enrolled in legacy loyalty programs that aren’t transparent or easy to use

1.3. Who should be happiest and who should be most worried about what you are bringing to market?

All existing and future hosts and guests who are interested in home sharing should be happy to know what Dtravel does. Within that group, Dtravel is especially appealing to individuals who understand the promise of cryptocurrencies and decentralization - particularly the benefits of token ownership / economic participation and community governance 

No one should be worried about Dtravel. In the not too distant future, it will be an open network for all types of individuals and companies to contribute to in a variety of ways. We welcome anyone who wants to contribute to a new kind of home sharing to join Dtravel in executing on our mission.  

1.4. What stage of development is Dtravel at (please refer to Note 1)?

Dtravel just launched v1.0 and is currently in the Product-Market Fit phase. v1.0 has core functionality such as the ability to book over 250,000 properties in 20,000 destinations using popular cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, USDT and the native currency of the Dtravel platform, TRVL. 

Core contributors are currently working on the most innovative and differentiating features of the Dtravel platform, such as early versions of community governance, support-to-earn, the NFT ecosystem, third party coin listings and more. These innovations will be tested with a small group of early Dtravel hosts to ensure they are impactful and ready to scale before making them available to a wider audience. 

1.5. Which are the specific metrics/KPI that you are most closely watching?

Host acquisition and engagement in the innovation aspects previously mentioned are the most important KPIs for 2022. It is important that these innovation aspects make their way into early product versions and are extensively tested for quality and impact before looking at other metrics such as bookings, room nights and transaction revenue.

1.6. Can you share any metrics/traction?

We have over 250,000 listings live on Dtravel. Having launched the v1.0 of the booking platform only a couple weeks ago, the bookings are only starting to come in now. The core team is excited to be building a community reporting framework in the coming months for everyone to see what is happening. Beyond that, once all platform activities (bookings, givebacks, refunds, etc.) are on-chain this information will be transparent and available to all. 

1.7. What new Web3 elements are you introducing?

1. Community Governance - Participants using Dtravel have a say in the development of the platform through proposing improvements and voting on them.

2. Support-to-Earn - Members have options to contribute their time, loyalty and skills in exchange for tokens. This involves contributors in the operations of Dtravel including customer service and support, host and guest retention, dispute resolution and arbitration and more.

3. NFT Ecosystem - NFTs issued for loyalty and engagement. This includes a new type of VIP membership represented by an NFT. 

4. Protection Pool - US$1,000,000 in property protection is available for Dtravel hosts. The funds leverage Decentralized Finance (DeFi) to earn a return. 

5. Star Hosts and Guests - TRVL incentives to reward the most exceptional hosts and guests determined by certain performance criteria. 

1.8. Will you be compensating early users/partners/contributors to your platform with tokens?

The primary ways to receive TRVL for loyalty at the very beginning are simple:

• Join the Dtravel community as an Early Bird;

• Help the community grow by referring others to Dtravel.

As for the Early Bird, to incentivize rapid growth in the number of community members during the early stages of Dtravel, the first hosts and guests to join will receive TRVL rewards in accordance with the following table:

A total of 15,000,000 TRVL will be allocated to 300,000 community members through the Early Bird Call. To receive the rewards, hosts and guests must complete bookings worth at least US$500 cumulatively. The rewards will be paid to the guest's or host's internal Dtravel platform wallet.

Community members will be rewarded for referring new hosts and guests to Dtravel who complete bookings worth a cumulative amount of US$500 or more. For every successful referral, the referrer will receive 50 TRVL.

The referral reward per community member is capped at 100 TRVL for new host referrals (for up to 2 successful host referrals) and 100 TRVL for new guest referrals (for up to 2 successful guest referrals). Therefore, the maximum referral reward per community member will be 200 TRVL in the instance of 4 successful referrals (2 new hosts and 2 new guests). The purpose of capping the reward is to promote a wider allocation of TRVL across the community so that more community members can participate in the governance of Dtravel, rather than restricting it to a few.

1.9. Funding status.  How are you approaching your fundraising needs (traditional VC, angels, tokens, etc...)

Dtravel is advised and led by former executives from Airbnb, Expedia and other global technology companies, and is supported by world-class venture capital investors. The seed round saw over $7m in funds raised, entirely through purchases of the TRVL token. 

Potential strategic investors in the TRVL token are encouraged to reach out to core contributors. 

2. Xeniapp

2.1 Brief description of Xeniapp

Xeniapp is an operating system for travel for the Web 3.0 economy – powering anyone seeking to sell travel online. Our system allows our clients to instantly launch a web-based storefront, a booking engine with wholesale travel inventory, a custom-for-travel CRM, and a blockchain based payment settlement engine.

2.2. What is the problem or the unmet need that Xeniapp is trying to solve?

We identified three massive pain points in the travel industry:

• Accessing wholesale travel inventory is incredibly difficult, but experience sellers can’t earn commissions without it.

• Launching a booking engine, featuring a broad selection of travel inventory, is technologically complex and incredibly expensive – but many experience sellers want to offer this on their website for their clients.

• Payments in travel are slow, expensive, and unsecure – more so than in other industries – due to the complex nature of transactions (cross-border currencies, multiple counterparties in each transaction, biggest target industry for credit card fraud). In many countries, payments for travel can’t even be made with a credit card due to excessively high fraud rates. Disputes among counterparties occur often, and resolution is difficult since each counterparty uses a separate booking ID.

Xeniapp’s system solves these three pain points at once, by providing a white label-able booking engine loaded with travel inventory at wholesale rates, all while recording and settling every transaction on the blockchain.

2.3. Who should be happiest and who should be most worried about what you are bringing to market?

Experience sellers and inventory suppliers are happiest with our product. Experience sellers can now launch a customized booking engine and bookings management system in minutes – saving them hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in tech expenses. Inventory suppliers see a huge new distribution channel – they can now access sellers they couldn’t reach before (because of the high tech and working capital hurdles inherent in distributing their product). Both parties can receive instant settlement of their transactions and reduce fraud by using XeniPay, our blockchain settlement engine.

Travel consortia and tech platforms, who respectively siphon off experience sellers’ commissions or charge huge upfront and monthly fees, could be disintermediated by our system. Credit card companies could also lose one of their biggest sources of revenue as transactions move to blockchain based settlement.

2.4. What stage of development is Xeniapp at (please refer to Note 1)?

Xeniapp is in the growth phase. We have a several-thousand client deep wait list to use our product, but we are launching it in phases with early clients starting December 15th.

2.5. Which are the specific metrics/KPI that you are most closely watching?

Drivers

• Number of users

• Transaction volume per user

• Commission rate (take rate on bookings volume)

KPIs

• Customer Satisfaction

• Customer adoption

• Cost per transaction on the decentralized network

• Reduction of Fraud

• The mode of payment (Fiat Vs. Crypto)

• Tracking account disputes against the ledger entries – We will be watching for all the edge cases in the system

2.6. Can you share any metrics/traction?

Not yet. The product is launching on December 15th with 3 initial clients.

2.7. What new Web3 elements are you introducing?

I would say creator economy dynamics – We are democratizing the Online Travel Agency space by allowing anyone to build their OTA at a fractional cost. Furthermore, we will enable them to operate in Xeni's decentralized ecosystem.

We have built a decentralized application (dApp) where travel agents, airlines, flights consolidators, hotel companies, accommodation wholesalers, car rental suppliers, tour operators, cruise companies, and any similar travel company can access a shared ledger - a shared repository of bookings information. The XeniPay application tracks transactions for all connected intermediaries and suppliers in real-time. XeniPay enables instant settlement, greatly reduces the total payments cost of a transaction, and facilitates accounts reconciliation across counterparties.

2.8. Will you be compensating early users/partners/contributors to your platform with tokens?

Yes – we will be launching a coin offering in the future and we will be using a portion of the coins as incentive tokens. The full tokenomics will be available in our white paper. Work in progress on that front.

2.9. Funding status.  How are you approaching your fundraising needs (traditional VC, angels, tokens, etc...)

We have recently completed over $2M in seed funding from Angels and HNWI. We are not looking to traditional VC at this time.

3. Weyout

3.1 Brief description of Weyout

Weyout is a decentralized social commerce Travel platform, designed for Travel creators, brands and modern travelers.

3.2. What is the problem or the unmet need that Weyout is trying to solve?

As the travel industry is entering its 3rd revolution, traditional travel distribution channels are broken :

• Modern travelers (GenZ) are shifting from search platforms to social media platforms.

• Modern travelers trust people, not ads anymore.

• Leading Web2 travel platforms such as Booking, Expedia or Tripadvisor are still relying a lot on search and ads and are keeping all the value from suppliers who want to escape but can’t.

• Social Media platforms are shifting from Ads model to an E-commerce model but are keeping all the value from creators who want to escape but can’t.

This is where Weyout comes in with its new Web3 Social OTA model.

3.3. Who should be happiest and who should be most worried about what you are bringing to market?

The happiest people within the Travel industry will be Suppliers (Accommodations & Experiences) who are still 70% dependent on middlemen & don’t get access to their data. And Travel Creators who try to live from their passion but struggle within this siloed and fragmented ecosystem.

The most worried should be the monolithic, centralized and commoditized Online Travel Agencies and all the other middlemen platforms in this online travel industry market.

3.4. What stage of development is Weyout at (please refer to Note 1)?

Weyout is entering the PMF stage.

3.5. Which are the specific metrics/KPI that you are most closely watching?

We’ll closely watch a bunch of KPI’s:  number of Travel Creators onboarded, GMV paid to Creators, number of brands onboarded, global travelers reached, conversion rates on direct monetization.

3.6. Can you share any metrics/traction?

It’s too early to talk about metrics and traction but we already are speaking with our community of Travel Creators and Brands to define the product.

3.7. What new Web3 elements are you introducing?

Weyout is using blockchain for different needs at every stage of the product road map. The first layer we are working on is the decentralized data management and infrastructure layer to ensure our users that their data, content and IP are safe and that they own their online shop. 

We are also discussing with our community to build a DAO for product vision & strategic orientations.

NFT’s and Social Tokens are more in the monetization product road map later in 2022.

3.8. Will you be compensating early users/partners/contributors to your platform with tokens?

Weyout will contribute to early travel creators governance tokens. Being community-led is part of our DNA.

3.9. Funding status.  How are you approaching your fundraising needs (traditional VC, angels, tokens, etc...)

Weyout is going Pre-seed in January 2022 with Angels & VC’s focusing on Creator economy, Social commerce, Web3 & new consumer app models.

1. Note 1

Problem-Solution Fit: Validating the problem you believe exists, and then validating the solution you believe will address that particular problem (typically for a particular type of user / market, etc.)
Product-Market Fit: Validating that the product you have built resonates with your target market, and validate that the same market will pay money, data, attention, time, or another resource in exchange for your product
Growth: Acquiring more users, customers, or clients, and understand the unit economics of your business model along with the underlying drivers of the unit economics.
Market Leadership: Achieving market dominance, or obtain enough market share that your business is financially sustainable, can invest in R&D, product development, and other long-term growth areas.
Scaling: Entering new strategic growth areas (typically new geographic markets, new product lines, or new applications of existing tech) that will provide the most value to the business, users, society, or other stakeholders.