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Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

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Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#81

Post by seizethecheese »

volker48 wrote: post #68
malandrew wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, but I'd love to here more on this. What features of hotels makes them particularly good portals between the black and white worlds.

Hard to prove how many people actually stayed in the hotel would be my guess. Other businesses like restaurants have inventory so you can't as easily make it look like you made a great deal more money than you actually did.

This idea is really seductive. Wouldn't it be kind of hard/traceable to fake bookings though? It seems like strip clubs or some sort of service company would be better.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#82

Post by bequanna »

kolev wrote: post #73

Expedia accepts Coinbase, not Bitcoin. This is no different than accepting PayPal. Did you pay with PayPal balance, credit card, or bank account - it doesn't matter. You implement PayPal APIs and you receive dollars from PayPal. The rest is just speculation, but seems that price is dropping as "acceptance" like this can only lead to selling pressure if it ever gains any traction, of course. I'm really surprised all t…

> It's obvious that the general public is not interested in Bitcoin and is, in fact, getting bored.

Do you have any proof to backup this statement?

Bitcoin related growth abound. The number of My Wallet Users has doubled in the past 6 months.

http://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#83

Post by kolev »

bequanna wrote: post #82
kolev wrote: post #73

Expedia accepts Coinbase, not Bitcoin. This is no different than accepting PayPal. Did you pay with PayPal balance, credit card, or bank account - it doesn't matter. You implement PayPal APIs and you receive dollars from PayPal. The rest is just speculation, but seems that price is dropping as "acceptance" like this can only lead to selling pressure if it ever gains any traction, of course. I'm really surprised all t…

> It's obvious that the general public is not interested in Bitcoin and is, in fact, getting bored. Do you have any proof to backup this statement? Bitcoin related growth abound. The number of My Wallet Users has doubled in the past 6 months. http://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users

Lots of people are splitting coins into multiple wallets, duh.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#84

Post by wwwtyro »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #79
marincounty wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea--some Harvard MBA making a name for themselves? I wish I wasn't so cynical. I sincerely hope crypto currencies annihilate the credit card industry. I guess any publicity is good publicity?

Yea--some Harvard MBA making a name for themselves? I wish I wasn't so cynical. It's not cynical. Accepting bitcoin as payment isn't beneficial right now. There's no benefit for merchants, because it's instantly converted back to traditional currency. There's no benefit for consumers, because consumers have to buy bitcoin in order to spend bitcoin, and buying bitcoin means consumers have to manage their own wallet or…

> Accepting bitcoin as payment isn't beneficial right now. There's no benefit for merchants, because it's instantly converted back to traditional currency.

I see two advantages: 1) They get their name in the news (and in consumers minds), and 2) they get the bitcoin spenders that they may not have otherwise (an admittedly small bump at the moment, but a bump nonetheless and at virtually no cost).

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#85

Post by kolev »

bequanna wrote: post #82
kolev wrote: post #73

Expedia accepts Coinbase, not Bitcoin. This is no different than accepting PayPal. Did you pay with PayPal balance, credit card, or bank account - it doesn't matter. You implement PayPal APIs and you receive dollars from PayPal. The rest is just speculation, but seems that price is dropping as "acceptance" like this can only lead to selling pressure if it ever gains any traction, of course. I'm really surprised all t…

> It's obvious that the general public is not interested in Bitcoin and is, in fact, getting bored. Do you have any proof to backup this statement? Bitcoin related growth abound. The number of My Wallet Users has doubled in the past 6 months. http://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users

Also, I'm sure there are speculators running scripts to generate new wallets and pump the bubble further.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#86

Post by onwardly »

avd74 wrote: post #42

When I first read this I thought, why would they start with hotels? may be because the big profit they make out of reservations? Then I remembered what an accountant friend once said to me: "Hotels are big portals between the black and white worlds". So you may have black money in bitcoins (and a Hotel which is your "legal business"), and want to "wash" it? now you can do it through Expedia (they having a bite in the…

As an entrepreneur in the travel space, my guess is that this move is primarily a PR move, and actual Bitcoin transactions aren't expected to move the needle in any substantial way.

If its primarily a PR move, the reason for starting with hotels is simple: Expedia, and all the OTAs (Online Travel Agency), make the VAST majority of their profit from hotel bookings* due to two factors:

1) Airlines pay extremely small commissions (starting with when Delta announced 15 years ago they wouldn't pay commissions on flights)

2) Hotels pay extremely high commissions, since unsold hotel rooms disappear as inventory the next day

Assuming the goal is PR, Expedia cares much more about getting consumers to think of Expedia as a place to book hotels than they do booking flights- thus they are "starting" with hotels.

*For example, in 2013 Priceline sold 270M hotel nights and 7M airline tickets. Of their $7B in revenue and $2B in profit, very very little came from airline ticket sales.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#87

Post by sillysaurus3 »

wwwtyro wrote: post #84
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea--some Harvard MBA making a name for themselves? I wish I wasn't so cynical. It's not cynical. Accepting bitcoin as payment isn't beneficial right now. There's no benefit for merchants, because it's instantly converted back to traditional currency. There's no benefit for consumers, because consumers have to buy bitcoin in order to spend bitcoin, and buying bitcoin means consumers have to manage their own wallet or…

> Accepting bitcoin as payment isn't beneficial right now. There's no benefit for merchants, because it's instantly converted back to traditional currency. I see two advantages: 1) They get their name in the news (and in consumers minds), and 2) they get the bitcoin spenders that they may not have otherwise (an admittedly small bump at the moment, but a bump nonetheless and at virtually no cost).

2) they get the bitcoin spenders that they may not have otherwise (an admittedly small bump at the moment, but a bump nonetheless and at virtually no cost).

I'd love to see evidence of bitcoin spenders. So far, they haven't been: http://blog.samaltman.com/bitcoin-price-pressure

I hear from merchants who start taking bitcoin that after an initial spike they see almost no volume.

The above quote fits with my experience as well, though my sample size was a single merchant. I noticed they were accepting bitcoin, so I sent a congratulatory email and got a response along the lines of, "Surprisingly, no one at all has bought my product using bitcoin! Maybe that will change in the future..."

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#88

Post by bequanna »

kolev wrote: post #85
bequanna wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's obvious that the general public is not interested in Bitcoin and is, in fact, getting bored. Do you have any proof to backup this statement? Bitcoin related growth abound. The number of My Wallet Users has doubled in the past 6 months. http://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users

Also, I'm sure there are speculators running scripts to generate new wallets and pump the bubble further.

>Also, I'm sure there are speculators running scripts to generate new wallets and pump the bubble further.

That sounds like pretty strong, objective evidence. /s

There are Bitcoin bulls and bears. Nothing wrong with being either. But, if you're going to make claims, at least have facts to back them up.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#90

Post by jpatokal »

rmason wrote: post #71

Well it seems that Expedia did a great thing by allowing you to use Bitcoin to pay for hotel bookings. So that means I don’t need to use my credit card any longer when I check into the hotel? Not exactly: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/27vc4x/expedia_star... If you read down in the comments you see hotel workers saying they will still apply a 2X block on the daily rate of the room to your credit card, even…

Think of it this way: you're paying by Bitcoin, but you're guaranteeing that you won't drink the minibar dry or trash the room with a credit card. This won't change until there's a well-established Bitcoin credit facility.
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