Crypto-focused online travel agency

Headquarters: Chorley, U.K.

CEO: Juan Otero

Founding date: 2017

Investment: £2 million

Travala is the leading cryptocurrency-friendly travel booking service, including an online travel agency brand and now a luxury travel agency service, Concierge.io.

Travala offers over 3,000,000 travel products worldwide, including stays, flights and activities.

Backed by industry-giant Binance, Travala is a champion of cryptocurrency adoption, accepting over 50 leading cryptocurrencies in addition to traditional payment methods, with about 70% of its bookings made in crypto.

PhocusWire coverage:

As bitcoin surges will cryptocurrency become an accepted form of payment in travel?
Founders Juan Otero and Steve Hipwell

Strategic goals for 2022

As travel slowly continues to rebound and as the number of people holding cryptocurrency and using it for travel rises as well, 2022 will be a very big year for Travala.

In fact, despite the continued impacts of the pandemic on the travel industry, 2021 has been a record year for us in many ways, including revenues, total bookings and partnerships.

Following this momentum, in 2022 we have a few strategic goals, including increasing customers for our luxury travel offering, Concierge.io, by 500% year-over-year, launching direct contracting for hotels and expanding on use cases for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

These goals are all aimed at providing Travala users with more ways and more flexibility to enjoy the travel experiences they’ve paused on for nearly two years.

Lessons learned over the last year

More than anything, we’ve learned that humans’ appetite for travel is insatiable. To feed the appetite of travelers who were essentially grounded starting in early 2020, the travel industry explored new largely technology-driven ways to recreate, enhance or temporarily replace the traditional travel experience we were prevented from accessing.

We saw the concept of travel NFTs begin to take root amidst an overall boom in the digital collectibles market earlier this year. Virtual reality-based travel has blossomed as a valid form of alternative travel.

And to mitigate losses as much as possible, hotel businesses have increasingly deployed backend technologies companies such as Life House and Canary Technologies, which help streamline business operations. I expect all of these trends to continue well past the pandemic’s end.

We also learned the immense power cryptocurrencies have to not just withstand a global pandemic but actually thrive as an alternative financial vehicle and one that can increasingly be used to pay for the same types of goods and services as fiat (aka cash). While many travel businesses struggled during the pandemic, Travala grew, especially in 2021, to hit record numbers in revenue and bookings.

This coincided with a massive rise in cryptocurrency users, which doubled to an estimated 221 million between February and May of 2021. More people than ever before own some cryptocurrency and are increasingly seeking to spend it on real-world experiences like travel. Again, we expect this trend to continue moving forward.