How Important Is Blockchain And Cryptocurrency In Hospitality? 🚀

Okay, everybody, one and all, thank you so much for joining us on the Boosie podcast for a very special episode Today we're going to be talking about cryptocurrency, we're going to be talking about NFTs, we're going to talk about blockchains, we're going to talk about everything digital currency and how it's going to affect you in the future. My name is Mark Simmerson and I'm the host of the Boostly podcast. All right, Mr. Simon Lehman, Mr. Luke and Mr. Manuel Pani. Thank you very much for joining us this evening.

Hi. Hi, Mark. Hi, everybody there. I'm Luca. I'm Italian, but I live in Sofia, Bulgaria and I've been in the vacation rental space since 2001 when I started a little booking platform.

Okay.

So my name is Emmanuel, I go by E. I live in South Florida. I'm also Italian. There's no. Anyway, shine any bad light on. On Italy that put me in. Luca are immigrants to other countries.

But.

It'S just opportunities tend to be all around the world. I started vacation rentals about 10 years ago.

My name is Simon Lehman. Luca said he's the pioneer. I won the award. So maybe we need to change that in the future so we can pass on the award to Luca next year from Simon. So a proud winner of the shortest award. It's a pioneer award of business industry. For 16 years I've served on the board of Common Way around, the largest property management company in the world with at the end, 50,000 units. So I know what it means.

Can you just please explain to us? And we've got, we had web 1.0. We are currently in web 2.0 and we're going to be moving to web 3.0. So if you could just in simple terms, just reveal what each one of these are and then I believe it will be in a nice little base point to kickstart this conversation.

So the web 1.0 is the web, which we started playing with around the end of the 90s and ended about 2005. It was the Internet of small websites, where small companies were doing small business online, right? So it was the web of people. You as a person could create your own business on your own website and live out of it. And I did this myself and I was very lucky to be able to travel in so many countries for so long with my own little business, lifestyle business. It was a booking platform, right? But you could have a small shop and everything like that. As the Internet matured, especially after 2001 after the big bubble which popped, but which actually meant that big companies could, you know, mature, like Google and Amazon and others, the Internet started playing seriously. Serious money got in serious investment. And then we have seen the rise of incredibly big companies. So this is Web two. It's the web of corporations, web of platforms, and Web three is what's coming and it's the web of communities. It's the same Internet we know already, but it's been powered by blockchain and which means it can now deal with value money. Not only money, but also any kind of value, like reviews are value. Right, so why blockchain? Let's see it also this way. The first two phases of the Internet, this technology could do only one thing. It could do very fast, very cheap data transmission. So everything which was communication and data became very cheap. Right? So before to send a picture to your grandma in another town, you had to take the picture, develop it, put it in an envelope, send it with a stamp, etc, etc, now you can just take a picture and it goes there. So the, the only real big technological advance was cheap and fast data transmission. That's one thing which Internet could do. And it changed the world.

How are you looking at this technology? Are you looking to bring it in sooner rather than later, or are you at the stage like with Simon was saying is you've got a little bit of your portfolio into the cryptocurrency because it's something that you're interested in, or are you now looking to use it as a form of payment for when guests want to stay in the future?

Yeah.

So.

First of all, I love everything that was said so far because I think it really highlights the most important part of really what's going on. Right. And I think what's going on is, as I said earlier, is the fact that crypto overall as an industry has more legitimacy now than it has. So as a host, as an investor, as a host, that's why I'm looking up, right? And I'm looking up because it's being something that is consistent. And once you actually start doing research and you get past the hype of some of the coins that are out there and everything else, you understand that the basic fundamentals behind it are really, really strong. And understanding good fundamentals and seeing the opportunity in them is what has me interested in kind of coming in the space. So to that person that you were saying that said it's going to matter to me later, to me that's a dangerous game to play because that line of now and later is very, very blurry. So to me now it's an opportunity to come in and start understanding and having the opportunity to also have some learning lessons now at the beginning that are not maybe as hard of feels to swallow if something was to happen.

What does NFT mean for the, for the crypto sort of newbies out there? And how is an NFT different to say something that is Bitcoin? I think bitcoin is obviously the most well known cryptocurrency. How would, how is an NFT different? And how have you used it?

Simon, you want to go with it?

You go for that. Luka, please.

Okay, well one look, the best way for me to understand what's happening is to consider the Internet. Sorry, I'm going to take it a bit from the far side. The Internet is not a technology anymore. The Internet is a place and it's basically a new continent which we have built, right? It's a place where we can live, we can meet people, we can make money, lose money, have a job, find a job, everything. The only thing we cannot do is bring our bodies, right? So as in the real world, there's two kind of things. There's fungible things and non fungible things. Now what is fungible? Money is fungible. So my hundred dollar bill is the same as your $100 bill, right? Maybe a liter of water is fungible. We can exchange them. Nothing's going to happen. There's no real difference, right? But most things are non fungible. My shoes, my car, my shirt, my house. So NFTs are everything else. So the stuff, digital stuff, it could be a sword in a video game, it could be a picture, a booking, it could be a contract, anything. Basically, NFTs is digital assets. Anything you can think in a virtual world, it's an nft, that's all. And the characteristic is that you can sell it and trade it and, or keep it with you. That's all.

Your knowledge of these big organizations and online travel agencies is vast, you know, what do you think their opinion? It's a two part question. What do you think their opinion would be? First and foremost, if you could like sit on their board now, what do you think their opinion would be on cryptocurrency? And the second part to the question would be, could you see a world where the likes of Verbo, Airbnb, the Booking Holidays Group, would start to accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment?

So, interesting enough, I think there was quite a bit of energy when, especially when the big raise of Bitcoin was about that. A lot of OTAs and others have thought about, hey, how important is it? Should we accept cryptocurrency? Is that an important piece for us going forward? We had obviously other payment methods. You know, later the credit card came and then you had PayPal and you have Apple Pay and you have other payment methodologies which obviously still go through the classical way of banking because there's a credit card behind it. So you still pay credit card fees. The transaction takes longer. You have people who take money in the middle, and obviously the disintermediate networks will, will take all that out, so the transaction fees will come down. It's, it's actually very, as a, as a, as, as a merchant of record, it's, it's an extremely attractive way, but it's not readily available. And I think in terms of technology and development costs, it doesn't make sense. Of course, on their roadmap somewhere technologically they have that on their radar. But it would surprise me that any of the larger OTAs to be today in the distribution world of vacation rental, put meaningful money and effort into developing accepting cryptocurrencies in the very near future, because there's simply no demand there right now.

Having a blast Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.