TRIPL: Experience, travel and leisure blockchain

Repository	https://github.com/tripl-to/proposal
Copyright	MIT License - 2022

TRIPL = smart travel industry protocol

TLDR for blockchain experts: Hotel nights, flight seats, opera tickets and a place in an exotic expedition can be seen as NFTs.

TRIPL allows direct interaction between hosts (hotels, airlines, activities...) and travelers. TRIPL is a protocol that enables a new open and distributed market based on web3, smart contracts and blockchain technologies. It allows the industry to interact in a new way, between hosts and travellers.

On top of the current industry applications new ones could be developed, such as:

Allotment auctions.
Cross hosts and traveller points/fidelity programs.
A new reputation system for both hosts and travellers that can integrate with old ones. Those reputation points will be used to governance the network (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).
Packages can be created directly inside the blockchain. Package creators will not need direct contracts with each host. They will be able to bundle packages joining each hosts availability.
Credit lines could be provided based on the host's "locked on contract" sales.

Why an investor should be interested in TRIPL?

I would say to an investor:

Let us imagine we are 1985, I am the nerd in the investment committee of a newspaper, and I am saying “personal computer looks like something we must understand and play with”. 10 yeas later, in 1995, the Clinton administration open internet. Would you still be at the 2005 newspaper investment meeting if you were the one how said that PCs were toys? Is your newspaper even in business?
In 2007 I was at Varanasi writing “Hey! I am watching a cremation ceremony!” I sent this message as an SMS to a UK number that was a Twitter proxy. No 3G, just text, to twit. In 2011 the Arab Spring happened.

Technolgies evolves faster on every interaction. Blockchain technology is not new and despite the legal and regulatory aspects of cryptocurrencies Web3 technology is a game changing one as it was Web2. Hotelbeds was built on surge of Web2. We should start learning and working with Web3 technology now because this change will happen faster than Web2 one.

TRIPL solves

Any technology should solve a problem. Our objective with TRIPL is to solve these problems:

Avoid redundant availability calculations across the industry for the same allotment/resource.
Avoid unexpected cost on cancellation due to currencies fluctuation.
Reduce financial complexity.
Reduce contracting complexity. The smart contract, the code, is the contract.

TRIPL extra benefits

Simplify the direct link between actors. All hotels publish with the same protocol, all clients consume with the same protocol. That creates an open market.
Smart contracts ensure all players clear and well known rules. That rules are developed also with a direct governance also clear and well known.
Open market protocol ensure a decentralized diversity of implementations, specially for helpers.

TRIPL philosophy

TRIPL is not a company. TRIPL is a project to implement an open market protocol, based on a set of smart contracts, with direct governance of all actors (including the travelers).
TRIPL is a disruptive technology that gives an opportunity to all current actors to play a role and stay in the business improving its current value.
TRIPL should be a join effort between the travel and cryptocurrency industries, the universities and the European Union.

TRIPL challenges

We identify the following challenges:

To represent the full allotment of a host in a blockchain.
Identity management in a way that enables anonymity at blockchain level and still serve the industry and legal requirements.
Host validation: host must be verified to ensure the quality.

Main ideas/concepts

Actors

Travelers
Hosts (hotels, airlines, tourist attractions, guides, the ones giving the real experience to the traveler)
Performers (musicians, guides, a person or a group of person that directly interact with travelers to give them an experience)
Helpers (CRC services, translators, auto publishers for availability, any service needed by the hosts to create a better experience for the traveler)
Reseller (travel companies, tour operators, bed banks, channel managers, the ones that facilitate the travel more on the side of communication, aggregation, APIs)

Availability

Travel industry spends on availability calculations a lot. Over and over tons of CPU cycles are used to know the price of a room in Paris for the next week. This calculus takes a lot of parameters, mostly all commercial ones totally obscure for the traveler, like the discounts the middle man have, the taxes that needs to pay with the ten financial companies they uses to bill their clients which are doing a very similar calculus for the traveler.

Decentralized by design: every actor could host a network node. Every node has an updated copy of the inventory. No availability requests are needed. Only confirmation is sent over the network. This is a distributed availability stack with check rate capabilities inside any home. Confirmation is verified by the network.

An NFT distributed database will make all that obsolete. The availability and the price are always public.

In the most simple operation the host publish what they want to sell and its price. The traveler interact with the block-chain and get that price.

Host can drop rooms at a fixed price or to an auction. They can also set if they are allowing re-sales and a fee for the resale. Of course, there will be cancellation fees.

Privacy

All booking will remain anonymous. At the check in the user can show a confirmation code generated with their private key. The host can have temporary access to the traveler personal information to complete regulation.

Some services, like flights, require some personal information in advance, like nationality. On this kind of services hosts can specify which data can have last minute changes. Also, if the service requieres any data must be visible by the host prior to the service the traveler will know it before booking.

All bookings/transactions even between the same traveler and host will be anonymized. The host will not be able to track previous booking from the same traveler in the block-chain unless the traveler allow it (usually as part of some loyalty program) but, anyway, the relationship will be private in the block-chain.

Taxes

The block-chain as a decentralized entity cannot retain any taxes. All prices in the block-chain are consumer prices. Hosts and helpers can generate invoices and taxes declaration based on the data in the block-chain. Hosts can delegate this task to helpers given them a restricted access to some data. helpers can also deliver software that could be installed in the hosts network to insure that any private data is never shared. travelers can agree with the hosts if their personal data can be shared with helpers for certain purposes, like taxes.

Governments can see all transaction on the network. While the privacy is guaranteed for the travelers open identity is a must for services providers in the network.

Bundles & Auctions

A hosts (an hotel, for example) can start a bid for a bundle (allotment) for the next summer season. resellers can bid and then resell it at higher prices. host will get the bid price and royalties of the subsequent sells.

Private resale

Did you book a room for that Champions Final in Barcelona and your team did not get to final? Re-sale that room to a fixed price or in an auction! The host will get a part but there will be no cancellation.

Block-chain rewards and governance

Travelers points

Travelers will earn points by traveling, validating and reviewing hosts, helpers and performers to participate in the block-chain governance decisions.

Host points

TBD

Industry play or independent

We can make the travel industry a more fair one. Why traveling to xxx which is 10k km from home is cheaper than going to the country next to ours? Costs. Simple, but that implies that people get less for the same work.

(Work in Progress) Road map & high level implementation details

Road map

Ideation, sharing: looking for people to join, criticize, grow the idea.
- Is it possible to represent the allotment in a blockchain and keep it with a small size to keep the chain fast enough?
Partnership: look for partners (mainly universities, hotel chains, bed banks and distributors)
Coin selection or creation
Coding first versions on test networks.
TBD

TRIPL Coin

By this time you may want to know which crypto asset to buy because this project is amazing... Creating a cryptocurrency maybe required, but it's not the only way. The network will have a reward system but it may be implemented in any existing coin. Services in this network should use any currency. Some hosts may prefer BTC or ETH while other will tend to use USDT or BUSD. It should be possible to implement TRIPL with these or another coins. TRIPL coin may exist but we prefer to define an excellent product with a clear market rules before choosing or creating a coin.

Identity

Any actor in the networks needs an identity. For travelers only a wallet address is enough. For hosts, performers, _ helpers_ and resellers some extra information is needed and must be validated to ensure the quality of service. hosts may also require delegation of certain permission to their workers, helpers and resellers.

Host validation

A host can be validated be a reseller (acting as a helper for the block-chain) or by travelers. As any decentralized database, making sure that the service offered are real is a main concern. Actual travel industry players can be very use full to validate hosts.

Objects (entities)

Experience (a set of:)
- Booking
  - Accommodation
  - Hotel
  - Camping
  - B&B
  - AirBNB like
  - Couch
  - Bed
- Transport
  - Flight
  - Train
  - Car rental
  - Taxi, transfer
  - Bus
- Ticket
  - Concert, sports, etc.
  - Food? Amenities?...
Traveler
Host
Performer
Helper
Reseller

Who we are

We are this team ... but we're looking forward more people to join us, come in!

You can also contact us at info@tripl.to

Why is this distributed as MIT

We are in the middle of a turn in history. A decentralised travel blockchain is inevitable, it's not about if it's just about when and who. We hope we can help to create a fair one. One that warranties the freedom of host and travelers to offer and enjoy the best experiences.

We would love to send this idea to the European Research Found. That founds are giving priority to collaborative projects between universities and several companies. We truly believe that frameworks is the ideal to develop a new industry standard that will change how we buy and trade our travels.

Support

Who can you help this idea grow?

Share it in the social media.
Share it in your company, university...

Other projects

Blockchain projects

Chain4Travel: great team and supporters with great industry knowledge.
Winding Tree They did a presentation back in 2017 in Hotelbeds. Almost the same idea as TRIPL.
Dtravel "Dtravel is starting with a minimum viable product launching in partnership with Hostaway. Through an API integration to its property management system, Hostaway customers have the option to “turn on” Dtravel as a distribution channel, enabling on-chain bookings without a big learning curve or change in operations for hosts. "
BitBook "Everyone deserves to travel, and BitBook is making this reality possible by rewarding people who book through their site, invite others or create compelling content."
Otium Technologies They are in Mallorca. A similar idea too.
Travel inblock (ex HBG people, very vague definition of the product)
Travel Coin Scam?

Portals with blockchain integrations

Travala They define itself as "Cryptocurrency Friendly Travel Booking". They accept payments in crypto, and they have an incentive program with its own token and NFTs, but they don't implement a travel blockchain. They partnered with Expedia and Binance.