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. This is a live recording for everybody that is joining us live right now. Please do leave a hashtag live in the comments. If you're watching on the replay, leave a hashtag replay. But please do keep joining in the conversation. All I ask for, doing this bit of content for free for you, inviting in some fantastic guests to educate you on cryptocurrency. Do me one thing, hit the like button. And also as well, if you feel a little bit generous, hit that share button. Share it into groups, share it with hosts, share it to everybody that you know that is associated with the hospitality community. Because we are going to delve into the metaverse today. Let's do this.

This is a freestyle going off the dumb.

Ready for my close up. Good looking let me tell you. Get more bookings. Aw, that'd be nice. Giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah, you're gonna get em hun. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Simpson. Whoa. Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard on the tee is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect you'll better but direct. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes Next.

All right, Mr. Simon Lehman, Mr. Luke and Mr. Manuel Pani, thank you very much for, for joining us this, this evening. Simon, just give me a thumbs up if you can hear me. Okay? Fantastic. Okay gents, you are all on the screen with us. Thank you so much. As, as the title and the description above mentions, we have got the pioneer, we've got the investor and we have the host. So what I would love for everybody to do is we'll start with Luke and we'll go Simon and then Emmanuel, if you could just please introduce yourself, let us know where you are in the world because we've got a, a worldwide audience this evening, a worldwide panel and then we'll, we'll get proper stuck in these questions. So we'll go with Luca first, if you could just please Just introduce yourself. That'd be fantastic.

Yeah. 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, which later was kind of. It was a precursor to Airbnb. In a way, it was doing the same things, but in small scale, and it allowed me to travel full time for Airbnb almost 10 years. And I've been in this. In this space ever since. Just in 2013, I started getting into Bitcoin and since 2017, I'm full time in crypto blockchain web 3. And so, yeah, it makes me a pioneer because I'm doing things which few people do in our market, but it's getting pretty, pretty busy in general, and I'm really happy about that.

Fantastic. Thank you very much, Mr. Simon Lehman. Where are you actually in the world right now? Because I can't keep track of you. You're always jet setting around somewhere.

I can hear you.

Sorry, buddy, might have to turn your audio up a little bit. Just as you're turning up that audio or changing the microphone.

Better.

No, we'll. We'll do Emmanuel and we'll come back to. To your good self.

Okay. So my name is Emmanuel. I go by E. I live in South Florida. I'm also Italian there. Knowing any. Why shine any bad light on. On Italy that put. Me and Luca are immigrants to other countries. It's just opportunities tend to be all around the world. I started at vacation rentals about 10 years ago. I was originally a maintenance guy at an apartment complex, then got into the. Into the management, the rental arbitrage and then the ownership. I am. Yeah, I just love this. This vacation rental space is getting very busy. I heard about bitcoin and crypto the first time probably ten years ago, but the legitimacy just wasn't there, in my opinion at the time, it just kind of sounded like this. This weird thing that maybe Mexican drug lords used to use, which they probably still do, but now everybody else is also on board and heard Luca on our last 24 hour clubhouse talking about NFT and accepting crypto for payment on vacation rentals. So, so super excited to just be here and just learn a little bit more about it.

Amazing. Fantastic. Simon, let's have a little micro microphone.

Let's try it again. How is that?

Perfect.

Perfect. I've just changed to my professional microphone. So sorry about that, Mark. I should have been better prepared, but luckily I just finished the Red Shoes Talks with Jeff Hurst and Kevin Lowcrop from vrbo, which is going to be streamed in a couple of weeks. So that was pretty awesome. I can ask them some questions on what's happening at Burbank Speedia. So that was great fun. So first of all, thank you for having me here, Mark. And secondly, it's a great topic. 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 HomeAway. I've run the largest property management company in the world with at the end, 50,000 units. So I know what it means to run a full service property management company from A to Z. And interesting enough, I've also been the CEO of FocusRide for a bit more than a year with largest online travel research and online travel conference in the world. And interesting enough, I've been going to that conference since 2005 and obviously if Focusrite doesn't pick it up, nobody will in terms of consumer behavior, travel behavior, booking behavior and what is in between. And focusrite has, especially with Philip Wolff, who unfortunately just recently passed away, has raised his blockchain cryptocurrency issue very early at the focusrite conference. It's been debated and talked about in travel for quite a while. So without a doubt I'm very keen on that. To learn more, I'm running a consultancy firm called Hal Atelier. I'm based in Switzerland at the moment. Yes, I was in Dubai last week, which was great to travel again, but I can tell you guys traveling is no fun at the moment. So rent your property local and still go and rent. Don't travel for the time being, but travel will come back.

Cool, man. Thank you very much, Jensen. Thank you for joining us and everybody that is watching live with us. Now, we've got a big audience which is fantastic to see. If you could just please as well give yourself a little bit of a shout out in the comments. So again, your business, your hospitality brand, wherever it may be, your website, put it in there because there will be your next guest watching this whether it's now or on the replay. So you never who's going to be watching. So please do, do so. So we've got plenty of questions that I know I want to get stuck into and I know that E and many other people who have asked me questions to ask Luca tonight. And obviously Simon as well, and he as well. I think that the best place to start with a conversation like this is really stripping it back because you're going to hear lots of buzzwords tonight. Crypto phrases tonight. And. And all the things. But what I really want to do, Luke. And we'll start with your good self just as we get that lovely microphone sorted. Can you please, can you just please explain to us? And we've got. We. 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.

Yeah. So, first of all, first of all, let's think for a moment how lucky we are of being in this moment in history. 25 years ago, there was no Internet and we already going through three iterations of this thing. Internet. The Internet has just started in the long journey of the human experience. 25 years out of. How long has the humanity been doing communication? Like tens of thousands or 200,000 years, I don't know. So this thing which is among us has just started and we sometimes forget how things change, right? We think, oh, now we have the Internet, it's fine. But this thing is changing constantly. So we can divide this in three main eras so far. 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 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 like Amazon today, Google today, Facebook booking, Airbnb, Netflix, they are at incredible scales and they grew so fast compared to companies in the decades before, right? So this is Web two is the web of corporations, web of platforms. Everything we do is done on platforms, right? We are in A platform. Now people are looking at this video, at this live from YouTube, Facebook, other platforms. We take our bookings mostly on platforms booking Airbnb, everything happens on top of huge corporations platforms. And this is great in a way because it makes things much easier. Before Airbnb, it was very hard to start a business online in vacation rentals. Now it's very easy. But on the other side, it comes with these problems, namely the fact that you are on a platform you do not own. And they can do whatever they want. They can kick you out, they can change the rules you just have to follow. It's, you know, this way or the door, basically. And webtree 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, 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. 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, put a stamp, et cetera, et cetera. Now you can just take a picture and it goes there. So 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, right? So with Web3, the Internet has learned something new. Now the Internet can also deal with value. If I have to send money to you, I don't need to go through PayPal or credit cards. I can send you cryptocurrency. But this is nothing. This is just one of the many aspects I can. And the very important thing is on the web3, I can own my own accounts. Now on Airbnb or booking or any other platform, you do not own your account. You may have a thousand reviews, 5,000 reviews on Airbnb, and tomorrow they can be gone. Because maybe a guest saw your CO2 detector and thought was a camera called Airbnb and said, you're spying on them. Your account is closed and good luck getting open again. This happens every day, right? And even if it's not, doesn't happen to most people. The very fact that this can happen, it shows us that we do not own the accounts. We do not own the reviews. If Booking decides to take away your reviews, they're gone, right? So on Web two, we are renting spaces. Whatever we're doing with these platforms, we are renting, we pay them and we stay on their platforms for as long as they want. It's even worse than renting because if I'm renting a place, they there are laws in place where the owner can already kick me out, like in a minute. It needs to go through some process. But let's call it renting. And the web3 is the web where we own stuff. You own your account, nobody can take it away from you. Right? So the only thing we actually own in web2 is a domain name. You buy a domain name, you pay $10 a year, that's yours. Okay? That's the only thing we actually own. We don't own our Gmail account. We don't own anything. Right. We don't even own the relationship with our guests. So Web3 is great news for people. It means now we can get control of our live on the Internet. And as this life gets more important. This is really good. And another analogy I have is Europe in the feudal times when people were oppressed by the kings and the lords, and then the Americas were discovered. Some people left and they went to a new continent where the rule of law was actually being applied and there were no kings there who could just decide that some people have to leave. And people in the Americas build a new continent based on rule of law. That's what we're doing with Web3. And the rule of law in this case is the rule of smart contract law. Right. So it's great news. And the only thing which is missing at the moment is most people in the short term rental industry to understand this, to start playing with it, and then we can actually start incredible things, build communities together around an idea.

So thank you for that. And it's really interesting we have in this conversation and I think the question that I want to come back with you and we'll just do a roundtable, we'll go to Simon, then E and then back to Luca. So when I announced that we were doing this podcast, somebody said to me all sounds great, doesn't affect me now. This is something to look in the future. And it got me thinking, well, is this. And could this affect us now? Is what we're talking about with web 3.0. Is this something that we need to start thinking about now for our, for our businesses? What would your response be, Simon, to somebody, a host who says that now is this something that somebody should be paying more attention to? Now? Or is this something maybe for the future? Like, what's. What would you say to that?

Yeah, absolutely, Mark. And it's a great observation. First of all, there's two things to look at in the future. One is being carbon neutral, 2030, 2050. And second is adopting cryptocurrency and disintermediated platforms to the point that LUCA has perfectly explained. And it's not an easy thing to explain. And I think with everything looking back at the evolution of other technologies, like when we came with the normal records at a time and then CDs came and tapes came and this and that, and it was just a very fast evolution of different technologies being it in the media side, television, whatever. And certain things came early, others adopted, others put their efforts on the wrong horse. And I think Bitcoin has sort of put that unreachable thing out there for people to think, well, that's only for. It's obviously high risk because we see massive fluctuation in valuation on one side and on the others. This is only for people who are super well connected and also have access to this type of technology to actually benefit from it. And I think now it's a matter of bringing these realities and this situation together and get everybody to understand what this is all about. And from an educational standpoint, I think that's one of luca's largest frustrations. And also others who think, you know, who understand what it means that you can disintermediate a contractual relationship between an A and a B and then. And a third person, individual person, actually approves this contract. That it's valid and it can be executed is a totally new concept. And thinking of that in vacation rental, I would say, you know, if you understand, obviously we know vacation rental has contracts, several ones, one with an owner, one with a guest. And so there's a lot of relationships happening in addition to all the points that Lucas mentioned. And to disintermediate that by one particular authority, you can, you know, you can make it safer, you can make it faster. Director in terms of payment, in actually closing the contract and everything else. And for that we need to apply Web3 technology to what Luca has explained to us. Now, this sounds extremely complicated, but in essence it's not that complicated. It's just a matter of actually understanding it, building education, talking about it. And I think that's what we're doing here tonight to put people more at ease to think about what this really is. When we see the evolution of electromobility as well, it's Something equally happening fast. And people are thinking, you know, even though, and I was part of those also, very, very, you know, let's say negative or critical to see that traditional combustion engine manufacturers were able to actually build electromobility and go into electromobility. It was only Tesla as a pure player. But no, it's happening now everywhere. If you see the large car companies they have on the side understood, and they've invested a hell of a lot of money to speed the evolution of electromobility up and, and, and, and, and put products out there into the marketplace. And I think this is, this is happening in Web 3.0 as well. I mean, luckily enough, Switzerland is considered to be one of the top moving countries, especially when it comes to fintech and cryptocurrencies. Very close to where I live. A lot of startups are there. We've seen a lot of failures. We have seen people entering through a different angle saying, you know, with mining and whatever we can make a lot of money. But actually the evolution of the technology itself and the understanding at large was not there and therefore we see a lot of failures. But we've seen that in every industry. You know, there's a lot of early movers, some can be very successful. It's like gold mining. Others are not. So they're investing into the infrastructure. They go mining, they, they don't find a nugget and others go straight into the right spot and get the billions out and then you have them flashing their, their, their bitcoin billions on, on, on TikTok. That's just a very, very small minority in the world who have made that happen. So I think it's, it's, it's the right time to, to, to, to speed up the conversation, talk more about it and do everything possible to educate the consumer and the, the industry itself what they can do with this type of technology going forward. But to be honest, Mark, I would not put all my money in it right of tomorrow. It's, it's an, it's still an evolution process that is not happening overnight.

Yeah, I, I agree with everything that you've just said and e, I want you to sort of answer the same question just to put a slant on it because obviously you are a host in Florida. You've got a real estate business and a short term rental accommodation business. So it's a perfect person to get on the podcast as well. 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 crypto currency 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 ever had. 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, it's 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, it's 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 pills to swallow if something was to happen.

Okay, so let's bring it back to talking about, can this be used now in hospitality? Luca, I've got a two part question and it's been a question coming from the audience. So I do want to ask that, but I want to, I want to focus first and foremost about the holiday vacation in Ibiza. I don't want to talk about that. So in a second talk about that. But the question that's come in, and I don't know if anybody can answer this, what is the demographics at the moment of the people that are guesting into crypto? I don't know. Luke, if you know about this, you know, is it, is it millennials? Is it Boomers? Is it Gen Z? Is it male? Is it female? If you've got any numbers or stats, if anybody can get them, that would be fantastic. But before you answer that question, Luca, if you could just talk about the holiday vacation rental in Ibiza that you sold via an NFT now, we'll talk about NFTs later, but can you just talk about that and about how you are using this technology now for vacation rentals.

Well, what we're trying to do in in trips is always experimenting things and, and trying to guess where the, this new Internet will take us. And we basically created an NFT which is a title. An NFT gives you a right to something. Right. In this case it gave rights to person for a week in a villa in Ibiza, Spain. So the person bought the NFT and the dates are from the end of August to the beginning of September. So this person has this NFT and he can go to stay at the villa or he could sell the NFT to somebody else, right? That's the very basic answer but it's an experiment. So we're trying to see all the dynamics behind this. The exciting part about NFTs for bookings is that you take something which is not liquid. When you make a booking, you can't sell it. It's a contract between you and the owner. With NFTs it becomes something you can actually trade, sell, give away as a gift and even keep after the booking because it represents a stay and that has a whole series of potential upsides. So that's it. We are experimenting with some new material here and we don't know what is going to bring us. The next NFT is going to be in Como, in a nice villa in, on the lake and we're learning and we share what we're learning with, you know, write articles and, and that's it. So it's, it's interesting if you are in, if you are somebody who likes experiments, if you think you just want ready solutions, it's actually early for that. Yes. NFTs are not something ready for bookings for primetime yet. It may get there, it may bring to nothing, who knows? I don't think so. But yeah, it's interesting if you want to see like how things evolve.

So if somebody wants to follow the journey of. When you do this again for the property in Lake Como, what's the, the best channel to consume this on or to follow this on? Is it LinkedIn, YouTube? What's the best place to let's say.

Medium, the Medium blog. So in our website or in our LinkedIn always shared our blog article. So it's just an article, you read them and you kind of follow the thing.

Yeah, yeah.

So just as you were talking then I did a quick Google search for stats. So to answer Nikki, to answer your question, 90% male and the main demographic in age is 18 to 45. So 90% male, 18 to 45, unless you have any other stats that gents that you'd like to share from anything that you've seen from out there.

Luca, I think it's changing because since NFTs came on the, on the scene, many more different people came in, like artists, namely. So that means also more, more women. Before that it was only about speculation, money. So it's kind of, yeah, males and young males especially. Now it's getting more, more widespread I think. So we're going to see these stats change in a few future, I guess.

Very good point. I checked the blog, the blog that was on was finextra.com and that was published on 29th January 2021. So obviously since then, in the past four months NFTs and the popularity and the word NFT as an acronym has gone, gone wide widespread. Which is, which is, which is really interesting. So very quickly then, for somebody who is thinking, what is nft? Luca or Simon, whoever wants to just sort of take that up, 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, and how have you used it?

Simon, you want to go with it?

You go for that. Luca, please.

Okay, well 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.

Okay, So I do recommend that everybody goes and checks out these acronyms and these words. Definitely a lot more. You can do a lot of fantastic research on trips, medium, blog and all that good stuff. Now, Simon, the next question I want to come to you. You had just said you were on the, on a call with, with VRBO and obviously you on the board of Home Away. So 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?

Yeah, absolutely. When I'm done with that, I would like to throw a question back at Luca because one thing that would also help in this conversation, Mark, to see what other verticals. Actually this is interesting because Luca mentioned the word artists before and it would be interesting to understand why artists and what other verticals are looking at NFTs. And why is this? Because. Because the. The artist wants to be as close to its customer than having, you know, kill all the middlemen that make millions and the artist gets nothing. And that's for music and everything else, a huge topic. And, and it's interesting to the audience to understand what the different use cases for NFTs and the cryptocurrency. Right. Right now is 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. 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 take all that out, so the transaction fees will come down. It's actually very. As a merchant of record, 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 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, because it's still an educational issue. Also, for owners, it could be very attractive. But why should an OTA do that? Because they benefit from the payment transaction and from the transaction itself. Because obviously, at a later stage when you can pay with cryptocurrency, also can disintermediate the OTA and connect directly to the owner and have that payment done with a contract that doesn't need an OTA in between. So for me, it's a twofold issue, strategically. One is to make cryptocurrency available as a payment method to the OTAs. But on the other hand, what does that mean to the entire blockchain technology? So why should they lead that development in disintermediating and how people do business together? And therefore, I think this is definitely not high on the agenda on any of the OTAs right now. They had to speed up other payment methods, which they've done. But I think at the moment, at large, it serves how the customers want to pay.

You know, Mark, where I find, where I find interesting as a question is also what is. I understand in the sense as an investor and a host, I understand my interest in accepting, accepting crypto payment, but as somebody that is actually paying with a crypto payment, are you going to be as willing to pay with crypto because you don't know, because technically, right, let's say that you're using a coin that then skyrockets over the years instead of you just kind of holding it. Because a lot of crypto investors that I know are more in the camp of like, buying, and then they're just kind of going to sit on it. I know there's a very specific term that's escaping my mind right now.

Hodling.

Yes, correct. So why would you. I can pay for this now with actually US Dollars, and I know exactly what my cost is because I'm spending the US dollars. But what if I pay for something with crypto and then later down the road that same coin is worth a lot more?

Luca, that is a fantastic question. What would you say to somebody specifically talking around, like, the NFT and the villa rental in Como, someone says, okay, so I've got to pay via this and I got to use X, Y and Z. But what would be the point when in like, say, trips goes, you know, to the moon, as they say, and just takes off? Like, what would be the reason for. For that?

Well, cryptocurrencies are a horrible method of payment. Right now, nobody has them. They're not actually fast and cheap, especially in these days, just a cents a meter is going to cost you 10, $20. Most of them are volatile. Why would I use my bitcoin to pay for a stay when I hope it goes to double? Right?

Yeah.

I can use stable coins. Like, they're always worth a dollar. Great. But you know, I got credit cards. Why should I use crypto? It's too early. It becomes really interesting when everybody has crypto and when there's layer two solutions, which makes it easy and fast. Today, horrible. I will never use my crypto to pay anything unless there's no other option. Right. Does it mean we have to kind of forget about it? No. It's a very good moment to get ready. But payments are the least exciting part of crypto. That's the thing. Every time crypto comes out in many industries, first thing which comes to mind is payment. With cryptocurrency, that's the last thing. It's the whole Internet, which is changing because of crypto. And it's not about money. It's about owning your own assets. I don't know if I was able to explain that. The fact that today you do not own your Airbnb account, it's an incredible danger. You're putting value every day to your reviews and you do not own any of that. What if you could today start getting bookings through blockchain and have your own reviews, which nobody can take away from you, and you can actually have OTAs use these reviews and you have the reviews connected to your listings and all the OTAs can take these reviews. So there's no more booking reviews and Airbnb reviews. There's your own reviews. That's. That's when things change. It's not about paying in bitcoin. Absolutely. Yeah. And we're gonna get there anyway. But, you know, it's early.

That, to me, was also very interesting. Right on the, on the real estate. And as I mentioned earlier, being a real estate investor, I. I also have a real estate team that does real estate sales in South Florida. And there is a big thing here. There is that title. Like, how do you hold title to, to a real estate property. To me, the blockchain technology would be super interesting as part of that because then that one make title work, I assume a lot cheaper because it's pretty much as I understand it, once it's on the blockchain that it is what it is and it's unique and it's non fungible. Right. Like you can't make other copies of the title of the property and that to me it's the other integrations and I don't know, Simon, if that's what you want to talk about when you said integrations. But it's all the different uses of the blockchain technology in everyday technology. Kind of similar to what you said just now. Look at like feeding into the OTAs from our own.

From our own blockchain.

Yeah, that's, that's a great, great point. And going back to Simon's question to Luca, why do you believe. And just sort of steering a little bit away from hospitality, why is it that you see so many artists, musicians and the likes using this technology? What is the appeal right now? What is it? They're not just doing it because everybody's jumping on a bandwagon. What is the appeal? And again, because I think the answer to this question will really help hosts figure out the answer to the question as well.

Well, they want to be free. They want to sell their own art directly to their defense fans without going through gatekeepers who keep all the money or most of the money, who control everything about their, their relationship with, with the fans. It's, it's a dream come true for them. And it's happening. If you go on Clubhouse, it's all about NFTs, artists and you know, musician and artists. And they are getting crazy. They are learning this complicated wallet things Metamask, you know, blockchain, because they see that this is a way for them to finally make some money if they are not very famous artists or if they're famous artists, to actually own the relationship, be free from this middleman. Basically, it's a very simple value proposition. Just go directly, sell directly. There's a new technology in the same way as we stopped needing a TV channel or a newspaper to publish our own stuff. You go on YouTube and you do your show, you write a blog and you got your readers, same thing. It's so obvious and so powerful that, you know, when people understand that, they just, they just go crazy about that. It changes everything in their lives.

So there'll be people watching this right now and they will be enthralled, they'll be motivated, they'll be wanting to find out more. Where do you believe and is the easiest way to get started in this technology, in this asset, whatever you want to call it? Because it still is early like you say. I think the day that you know that everybody's using it is when you know the taxi driver turns to you and is asking for payments in Bitcoin. I mean that's the day when this becomes more known. And this is very, very early for a lot of people. So a lot of people are watching this and I know there's people in the comments saying Jack said I, I started doing this two years ago. I bought some money in eth and I've just literally not seen, checked it since. I recommend Jack checks it. It might look kind of good. But like where do you believe is the best place to get to get started? And like Luca or Simon or E, you can, you can all jump in and, and ask this question.

I would say do, do a Simon. That's it.

And what, and what did Simon do?

Simon says ask someone to help. And you know, Simon, maybe you want to say this one because it's, it's, it's actually easy right to do to start this process. That's it. Oh, we lost the microphone. I think.

Simon was the perfect guest and just muted his microphone. There you go.

Yeah, I'm, I'm sort of used to it sitting on webinars several times a week. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, you need to be curious enough and I think that's a starting points. You know, I think you need to start looking into it. So yeah, great point but you need to start looking into it and I think the more do that and then the best source is still sitting in Mountain View in California without a doubt to start digging into this and, and get information on Google on a search engine to really try to find out more use cases. I mean there is so much content about it on YouTube, on, on social media, in, in clubhouses. I mean today the amount of information that we getting is so, I mean it's unlimited. I mean I go crazy. Today I had an interesting email or a slack actually from someone sending me an email to say hey can you tell me what are the best vacation rental events to go to in the year? Or what are all the vacation rental events in 2021? I mean what do you do in today's world? You actually literally enter these words into Google and on position number 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all the conferences of VRMA listed with one link. So it took me literally 5 seconds to answer that question to that person. So either you're too lazy to look at it or you simply don't know how a search engine works. For me, that is so basic and everybody nods their head, but people still don't do it. We have voice recognition. I can even drive in the car and say, hey Siri, tell me about NF, NFTs or disintermediated networks. Tell me about blockchain Siri. And she will tell me and I can say now where the Alexa. And then my Alexa starts talking to me on my desk. I don't want her to, so I turned her off before. But that's, you know, that's where it is. And I think we need to, we, we're always trying too hard, we're going too far for any information that we're trying to, to, to search, but we have it on our fingertips.

I'm really impressed that your Siri understands you because when I talk to my Siri in my Yorkshire accent, she just looks back at me. Confuses my two year old son does. So well done for that. Okay. The one thing that I have noticed with cryptocurrency and I move my cryptocurrency from wallet to wallet, there's a very, very long bit of code that you have to copy and paste. And I've recently been looking into thanks to luca, crypto domains. LUCA where now the research that I've done, I can see the massive benefit of having a crypto domain. It's, it's kind of interesting. Now, could you shed a little bit more light on cryptocurrency domains, whatever you, whatever they're called and the benefits of it and how could potentially somebody use them in, in the future? So today, for example, I went and bought boostly.crypto. i don't know if I meant to say that publicly or not, but I've went and bought it today, done nothing with it, absolutely nothing with it. So, you know, nobody can, can do out. But how, how, how and where do you see these, these new domains? And, and like how will it make life easier in the future?

First of all, a crypto domain is like a domain name which can point to a website or not it has an address behind. So I can send money to your crypto, sorry, boosted crypto, right. Or you could send money from yours to tripscommunity Eth and Simon can have his own Simon crypto or eth or anything and e the same so it's a handle like we're using our Skype handle, our Twitter. But maybe Twitter is the most powerful, right? It's going to be something like your Twitter handle, that Twitter is about Twitter, right. Where can I find you on Twitter here at Boostly, right. In a few years, where can I find you online? You're not going to give your email, your Twitter, you're just going to give your crypto domain and from there there's everything else. Right. So, and it's a way also to avoid sharing a long string, 0x3 4 and you just give a few, just a word basically with a dot in the middle. That's just one of the many things which is coming out of the Internet. But the very interesting thing here is you own this. No company can take this away from you, ever. Your domain name, Boostly Co uk I think. Yeah, it belongs to a, it's, it's protected by a company. It's like a bank, right. But something could happen. Maybe they go out of business or maybe you lose it. Whatever the one you just bought is there with you forever. It's. You own it for the first time on, on the Internet. On the Internet, you own something totally 100% that changes a lot of things. It's not immediately clear why, but when you own something, you own something. And you don't own something, you don't own something, it's very different.

I wonder then if I had that domain and say somebody wants to buy it from me in the future, can I sell it to them?

You go on an NFT marketplace and you sell it, you put it for sale.

I'm going to go, I'm going to go check, I'm going to go check if Facebook crypto is available after this and sell it to Mr. Zuckerberg.

That train is, that train is.

Train is passed. I was having, I was having a little light bulb moment, get my own back on Mr. Zuckerberg. But okay, thank you so much for this. Now I, I love to finish these podcast episodes with quick fire questions. We have discussed quite a lot of different variables of the cryptocurrency world and I will put all of the links to trips and how you can interact with all these, these amazing people after the show and I would love for everybody that's tuning and watching in live to keep asking your questions, let me know which cryptocurrencies you are invested in. Jack said he's, he's invested in Ethereum, hasn't checked it in a few years. He's going to get a nice surprise when he logs on later on. But please let us know what you are investing in, what you are doing in this. In this world, if at all. And if you've not, like you say, perfect time to get started. I do want to premise all of this by saying neither Luca, e, Simon or myself or financial advisors, please do not sue us. Please do not take our advice. This is literally for entertainment purposes only and I do have to get that in. But Quick Fire questions time now, gents. I did send them to you before. And again, audience tuning in live. I would love for you all to join in as well. The first quick Fire question that I wanted to ask and we're going to go e then Simon and then Luca. It had to be a cryptocurrency type 1 and it is very topical at the moment, seeing this being recorded in May 2021. Dogecoin Number one, have you invested in it? Number two, do. Is it. Do you have any interest in it at all? Is this the first time you've heard of it? Is it to the moon or is it a meme coin that is destined to fail? What's your opinion on it? We'll go e then Simon, then Luca. Dogecoin.

I saw Elon on SNL this weekend. I was actually pretty impressed about how funny he was. I. I think I'm now personally invested in it. I talking about my Uber driver. I went down to Miami this past weekend and my Uber driver was all, all interested in it. To me that as a real estate investor, that always makes me a little bit scared is when your Uber driver tells you you have a great coin. I have no partially in it, so I don't have much, much else to say on it.

Elon is obviously Elon Musk. He is the founder of loads of things and he's obviously, if you ever follow his Twitter account, he likes to talk about the Dogecoin. He's actually putting it on a space SpaceX. He's literally taking Dogecoin to the moon, which is very funny. He loves a meme. Simon, same question to yourself. Dogecoin invested in it, following it. Are you just, just, just basically laughing at it? What's your opinion?

No, I'm not invested in it and I'm laughing at it.

Good answer, Luca.

Well, dodge coin is for laughing and that's actually where it's value stays. I, I bought a few five years ago. Four years ago. Seventeen. Yeah, four years ago. And then I sold them at the beginning of this year because they went a bit up and then I bought again and then I sold again, and then I said, no, this thing, I want to keep it. I want to see what happens in five years time. Because dogecoin is a bad cryptocurrency in terms of how many people own it, in terms of emission. But it's an incredible joke, an incredible meme. It's got into the culture today and it's really hard to know where culture goes. So I'm going to keep my dogecoin. See what that.

Oh, fantastic. So you are huddling onto that dogecoin, which is fantastic. I, I did not have you down as somebody that would have invested in it, so I love you even more for it. I haven't, I've watched it. I wish I had six months ago, but now I'm just watching it and enjoying joining the Reddit community and watching all the memes and whatnot. So that is, that is interesting. Okay, next question. We're going to steer away from cryptocurrency and we'll go Luca, then Simon, then E. So what is something that you do that other people, like friends, family, think is either absurd, crazy fun to do? I, I call it a guilty pleasure. So, and I've, I've given mine many times on this podcast, so I'm happy to share. When you're in the, in the supermarket and when you're in, in the queue and you see those trashy magazines that talk about celebrity gossip and all, what, I cannot help it. I have to pick it up and read a copy. Cannot help myself. I love doing all of that. Even though my wife looks at me with absolute disgust, I can't help her. That is my guilty pleasure. That's the absurd thing that I do. So, Luca, Simon, E, what's your crazy, observed crazy thing that you do that others think is just bananas?

I, I started three days ago and it's not my fault. It's because I'm in the office with this guy, he got into crypto two months ago and he went straight to, pardon the French, coins. And I'm not talking doge, I'm talking other dogs coins which have no reason to exist, but the only thing they do is like they go up very fast. So he buys them, he looks at them, he buys them in the morning and he sells it in the afternoon. And I'm a long term crypto guy. I believe in fundamentals, blah, blah, blah. And he's making money and I'm not making money. Like I'm making money slowly, right? So I started three days ago to say, okay, you know, whatever you buy, I buy. Like Today I bought $100 of a funny, you know, the coin of the dog of the Dodge coin picture, right? And I bought it for $100, and I sold it for 150 a few hours later. And right now I am invested in Mark Zuckerberg. Put a picture online today or yesterday with these goats. And one gold is called Bitcoin and one gold is called Max. And somebody made a coin called gold zook or Zook gold. And I bought it this morning, and it's up 50%. And after this, I'm going to try to sell it. So that's my guilty pleasure. I'm having a lot of fun with it, and I'm also learning a lot.

That's amazing. That's fantastic. Even when we try to take the conversation away from cryptocurrency, we drag it straight back.

For me, me a code.

Hey, no, that's absolutely fine. I love it. And again, this is not a financial advice. Do not go invest in a goat coin or a Shibu coin. This is just for entertainment purposes. Simon, what is your.

Well, my answer is going to be a lot shorter than. Than that. Mark. I'm sorry I'm so not entertaining tonight, but I have a massive obsession in red shoes. It's not a secret. I wear red shoes wherever I go. And a lot of people think that's crazy, but we as men have very little to show ourselves. And. And, you know, there's a little story to it. I might share that to the audience. I got married in red shoes. And then when I was packing to go to a vacation to a focusrite conference the year of our marriage, I asked my wife, which shoes should I take? And she says, take the red ones. I said, I can't go to a conference with red shoes. Are you crazy? And she says, no, take them. It's. It's. You will see. It's going to be fine. So I wore my wedding shoes 10 years ago, which we were married this year 10 years to the Focus right Conference. So that night I called her back and she says, how did it go? She goes, you don't want to know. I got so many compliments from him, and it's crazy. So the red shoes stayed with me. Now there's Simon Lehman. Red Shoes talks on AJ Atelier. This is the reason why I have now more than 12 pair of red shoes. Certain people think it's crazy, but that's sticked with me. And. And there we go.

I love. I'm looking forward to seeing you at the next conference with those red shoes. I love that. Thank you for sharing. E.

Yeah, I've been, I've been kind of thinking about it. I, I guess guilty pleasure for me lately, especially this past year, the quarantine year has definitely been the top. And I think now, now the content on there is getting a little bit smarter as some of our friends, like Sean is now going on there. So you have some Airbnb and hospitality quality. TikTok, there's a lot of crypto stuff, but at the beginning was just purely just dumb dancing. Yeah. Just super stupid things. But I honestly, it is so fun because you just see people just, just without judgment, you know, just, just enjoying themselves and doing very stupid things. And to me, you know, I, I spend all day talking to people on the phone and doing things like this that it's that good 15, 20 minutes of just turning the brain off. It's kind of the equivalent of watching trashy TV. That used to be my thing.

Yeah. 100 cannot agree. Agree more. And it is fantastic to see the people that are doing really well on that platform who, you know, who wouldn't. It wouldn't be popular, say on YouTube or wouldn't be popular, say on any other channel, but TikTok gives that ability for anybody to become viral in any way, shape or form doing some of the most maddest things. So I totally agree. And Sean, Mr. Sean, Rocky G, he is on the tick tock and he is. His content is very marmite, as I had to call it. You ever love it or you hate it and you can see that in the comments, which is very funny to see. So thank you very much. And the final, final one, we'll go eat and Simon, then Luca, the final one. What is your superpower? So what is your, what is your superpower? E.

Understanding people, like reading people and, and, and kind of creating meaningful relationships. I think growing up I used to use it for the wrong things. Now, now with, with age, especially with, with real estate sales and just hospitality, it's been what's given me the ability to really connect with our guests, connect with our travelers and make people feel special just by understanding and actually let me know, lending our ear because a lot of times people, you know, when they call, they just kind of want to feel heard and understood of the sacrifice that it takes them to save the money to come on vacation.

Right.

And I think having empathy dealing with people, it's what we could all use a little bit more often. And I'm Being very blessed that that's just kind of part of who I am.

Nice. I like that. And it is a very, very good trait for hospitality owners to have. Love that answer. Thank you, Mr. Simon Lehman.

I can make it very short. Emotional intelligence and networking. That's what I'm. That's what I'm about.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah, I agree with that. Agree with that, Mr. Luca.

Curiosity takes me to places where there's few have gone and I enjoy the frontier, both traveling and on Internet. So, yeah, curiosity, which is a superpower everybody needs in the future, I think.

Yeah. Well, it will take us to the metaverse and beyond. It takes to Decentraland and all that lovely jazz. So on that note, I just want to say thank you to everybody that has not only tuned in live, but to the people that have joined me on this stage this evening. Luca, if anybody wants to find out more about trips, I've already had people asking me in the chat, where do we go? Where do we go? Where do we go? Where? Just what's the website?

Trips. Trips.

Community.com.

Trips community.

Where it starts. Yeah.

Tripscommunity.com and from there you can go down the rabbit hole and be super curious. Simon. Mr. Simon Red Shoes Lehman. Where can they find out more about the consultancy service, about all of the amazing stuff that you're putting out there on the Internet? Where's the best place to start?

Absolutely. It's ajlattelier.com that's where you find us. You'll find us on YouTube, you find us on Vimeo. We've got our own website. And you find me most probably on LinkedIn. The best. Simon Lehman. L E H M A double N. Fantastic.

E. Please shout out the podcast and anywhere else you'd like to direct people to.

Yeah, if you want to reach out with me directly. IG is the best. It's E Pani Real estate. Pan is P A N I. And then every Monday we release our show. It's called STR Secrets. We have people like Mark on there and maybe I can talk Simon and Luca and coming on as well, one of the stage. And that's 100% hospitality, short term mental base. Our goal is to really kind of share this amazing industry that has gifted us always so many opportunities and help from the small guys that are just trying to quit their nine to five job like my, my co host Mike did. Two people that have a lot of units and just trying to get their systems more dialed in and start now accepting crypto.

Nice.

That's our goal there you go.

Okay, everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. Before you leave, whether you listen to the audio, watching the video or whatever it may be, please do in the comment section below in the chat, whether it's on Facebook, YouTube, wherever, or if you want to email me. Mark, let me know your main takeaways from this. Are you intrigued? Are you interested? Are you going to gonna get involved? Let me know what your thoughts are because your comments, your feedback shapes the future episodes and and what I do for Boosie. So please do reach out, please do let us know. Thank you so much for tuning in, gents. Thank you for being part of this. I'll be back again for another live podcast experience sometime in the future. Please do check out booster.co.uk ical on there. You can add all of the next events from Boostly straight into your Google, your Apple, your Outlook calendar so you'll never miss another event. But for now, let's call this thank you very much for everybody that's tuning in and we'll see you on the other side. Bye gents. Take care.

Bye.

Thank you.