The Binance-backed travel booking website Travala has announced a new partnership with the online travel agency Expedia Group.
According to a press release published July 6, Travala and Expedia have joined forces to offer consumers a frictionless cryptocurrency travel-booking experience. The release claims more than 700,000 Expedia Group hotels and accommodations have been made available via Travala.com, in addition to the platform’s existing 2 million hotels across 230 countries.
#Travala Partners with #Expedia to offer frictionless crypto travel
Alfonso Paredes, Senior Vice President at Expedia Group, says: “Our aim is to support Travala to scale their business faster than ever before.”@cz_binance #Binance #AVA $AVAhttps://t.co/37hIEc41pF
— Travala.com ✈️ 🏨 (@travalacom) July 6, 2020
Juan Otero, CEO and co-founder of Travala, said the new partnership reflected the rise in popularity for cryptocurrency. He also explained that consumer travel was on the rise following months of COVID-19 imposed shutdown.
He said:
Our latest month-on-month data shows consumer confidence and the desire for travel is returning, with an 81% increase in room nights booked and website traffic up 50% week-on-week.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said Travala had proven its ability “to build a world-class travel booking platform” and was excited by the partnership with Expedia.
AVA, the native token for Travala, underwent a subsequent price increase following the announcement. As of writing, the coin has appreciated more than 20%.
Altcoins Move up as Bitcoin Stalls
The AVA token is not the only in the cryptocurrency space growing exponentially so far this year. While the price of bitcoin has been range-bound moving between $9,000 and $10,000 since the beginning of May, various altcoins have been moving up.
Over the last 6 months, the price of BTC is up little over 13% according to CryptoCompare data, while other altcoins have been moving up. Most of these are related to the decentralized finance space, or to blockchains launching new products or announcing specific partnerships.
VeChan’s VET, for example, surged after it was announced VeChain was attending the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2020, hosted by the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government. The conference will also be attended by Microsoft, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, and Amazon. One VET is changing hands for $0.0148, up from $0.,0055 in January.
As CryptoGlobe reported, Kyber Network’s KNC tokens have risen over 650% year-to-date thanks to the upcoming Katalyst update, which will allow token holders to earn ETH rewards while participating in governance by staking their tokens.
Another altcoin that moved up significantly is OKEx's OKB cryptocurrency. The token, which gives various advantages to the bitcoin exchange’s users, is up 74% over the last six months, going from $2.78 to $5 at press time.
OKEx’s OKB isn’t tied to decentralized finance protocols, which Waves CEO Sasha Ivanov warned could be turning into the next ICO bubble, but is instead tied to one of the leading crypto exchanges in the world.
Decentralized finance protocol Aave has also seen the price of its LEND token surge so far this year. While in January the tokens were trading at $0.017, they are now $0.175 — a 750% increase.
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