A newly launched online booking platform, BookWithBit, provides advanced booking services for bitcoin users and claims to be a bitcoin analogue of Booking.com.

Booking with bitcoins is more convenient, claims the website of the company, because cryptocurrency transfer is quick and safe and does not require details concerning the client’s credit card. Privacy is what is guaranteed by bitcoin. Ten percent of all data breaches occur in the hospitality sector, warns the website. Thanks to bitcoin, such a threat will no longer exist. Moreover, the client will not have to worry about exchanging money: bitcoin is instantaneously converted into any currency.

BookWithBit offers its customers various advanced booking options. As it is currently being tested and since it aims at attracting as many clients as possible at this early stage, the project offers a credit of 2,100 bits to customers who join immediately. The company also allows the customers to split booking costs with friends and monitor online how the payment has been distributed. 

Booking with bitcoin in advance involves a certain risk connected with the high volatility of the cryptocurrency. The fiat currency price of a hotel room is converted into bitcoin at the moment of booking and the respective sum in bitcoin is transferred at the moment of executing the payment. If bitcoin’s exchange rate changes in between, the difference will be at the expense of either the customer or the hotel. “For example if the hotel room costs $50 for a night you would pay equivalent block chain depending on the latest exchange rate. In case the price to dollar is $500 at time of booking you would pay 0.10 Bitcoin. Thus when you make the actual payment you would be required to pay 0.10 Bitcoin irrespective of the change in currency value,” writes the website.

However, to those who do not want to pay with bitcoin, BookWithBit suggests paying through Dwolla. This is a payment providing system which uses fiat currencies, but is safer that a traditional credit card payment system. It does not require sharing such personal information as the client’s name and credit card details.  

To stay updated about hotel expenses and their booking, the customers are advised to join Bitcircle, a feature that also allows to resale booked rooms instead of cancelling them. 

When the project is launched on a full scale, it will cooperate with 40 hotels owned by various companies, mainly in the US. Later on it will expand to Italy, France, Great Britain and India, says Kalpesh Patel, the founder of BookWithBit, in an interview for CoinTelegraph. Patel, an Oklahoma-based hotel owner, claims to be a bitcoin fan and says that, as far as his own hotel services are concerned, he will soon accept bitcoin only.

Andrew Levich