WHITE PAPER V.1.0 Hotelbyte presents DHI, "distributed hotel interface", the first Blockchain platform focused on distributed hotel bookings. Alejandro Gómez lexfaraday@hotelbyte.org Carlos Hidalgo knx@hotelbyte.org Ana de Andrés ana@hotelbyte.org Jordi Roldán jordi@hotelbyte.org Alfredo Reyes alfredo@hotelbyte.org Jero Rodriguez jero@hotelbyte.org Pere Joan Pomar pere@hotelbyte.org Xavi Ortiz xavi@hotelbyte.org Wednesday, February 07, 2018
HOTELBYTE FOUNDATION Welcome to the first hotel foundation of the Blockchain! In this document we will provide you a tour around the Hotelbyte project to show you a new hotel booking concept. This new hotel booking concept will allow the hotel sector being in the top of the technological revolution of the Blockchain, facilitating and bringing the hotels and users to a new level experience. The Hotelbyte Foundation goal is to be the world leader of hotel booking revolution, focused on standard and services improvements creation. If you want to contribute to this joint initiative, please contact us! Currently the project is in its initial phase of development, so we are entirely open to any comments, ideas or suggestions on the subject. But please remember that it is better a constructive criticism than a WOW cavern troll. Our project is based in LPGL v3.0 license. If you are interested in collaborating with us please ensure you understand all the rights and obligations of LPGL v3.0 license: https://opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0 1 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 HOTELS 4 USERS 8 INTERMEDIARIES 10 WHAT/WHY HOTELCOINS? 11 HOW TO GET HOTELCOINS? 12 ROADMAP 13 APPENDIX 13 TEAM 13 2 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
INTRODUCTION If you are a hotel Try to imagine the full control on room rate, the full price adjustment no matter the intermediaries commissions, the hotel position based on real experiences and not depending on negotiations for demanding contracts with integration or reservation platforms... If you want to be the first to innovate, if you want to take control of your services without depending on demanding negotiations with integration platforms, pricing control, time to market, etc., if you want to received true experiences of your guests, or simply be exclusive and luxurious, this is your project! If you are a user Do you remember how many hotel booking websites are there? Surely you only remember those who can afford to spend huge amounts of money in marketing and positioning, and although it seems that there is healthy competition and a wide offer really is not, there are people who reserve the same room paying up to twice as much as another that does it for another channel. So, what is the reason to have five different room rates for the same hotel, if at the end you are going to enjoy in the same way? This is not supply and demand, it is a succulent business that does nothing but hide the most important thing that is the hotel experience, with real added value and not by commissions resulting from negotiations and monopolies of the biggest players in this sector. We want you to have more than one price per room, yes! But we want this due to one room offers massage and the other room does not, for example! If you want to purchase a hotel service and pay for a real service, without hidden fees, without wasting time saving money, besides having a voice and vote, this is your project. If you are an intermediary Integration platforms, bed banks, travel agencies, etc., they are ending their days if they do not adapt and change their philosophy. So join to us to make great things! 3 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
The hotel distribution models based on volume and/or commissions on the same product, are old fashion. Now the world tends increasingly to transparency and fair distribution of goods and services. But even so, there are ways to maximize profits from this new hotel model and we will be happy to work with you. So if you want to get into this revolution, this is your project. So remember, we are an innovative platform nothing to do with ICO, TOKEN or anything about that. HOTELS Below the details about how hotels could be benefited from this innovative business model. What's in it for the hotels? In one word: Blockchain. Thanks to Blockchain technology we can provide a business model with no added fees (only the transaction itself) and with a real potential for increasing visibility based on real experiences, as well as an immediate update of search results, increasing profits and striving to improve your service and not in negotiating demanding contracts with integrations. In addition, the feared overbooking and delayed billing synchronizations with intermediaries disappear, as the hotel receives the money instantly, the litigation with the platforms are running out. Therefore we could list some of the key points you will achieve with this project: Cost savings in SEO positioning and system scalability platforms. No more commercial litigation due to reservation errors. No more billing cycles with third parties. Improvement of the quality of your service to obtain experiences validated by your hotel. Control and improvement on the hotel SEO positioning. The safeguarding of hotel reservation sensitive data in a private Blockchain. And last but not least, all the advantages of Blockchain, fault tolerance, redundancy, etc. 4 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
Product loading Now that you know a little about the concept of the idea, let's practice: I'm a hotel and I sell rooms and services. And now that I have to do? How do I present my product to the rest of the world? Well, the answer is very simple, using an interface called DHI, distributed hotel interface. DHI will allow you to internally upload your product in real time or with a minimum propagation time (special dates such as summer campaigns, etc.) When we refer to power internally upload, we mean that the DHI interface can be executed directly on a computer in your hotel or hotel chain, or if you prefer you can host it on your own servers. With this DHI interface, we want to standardize the way to load the product onto the Blockchain, simplifying the interfaces and customizing those modules of the hotel chain. Pricing Next steps! Now we have loaded product, but we are messing something very important: What s about the price? What's about the hotel campaigns or promotions? What's about the booking cancellations? In the DHI interface, you will be able to define everything related with pricing. How does DHI interface pricing work? You will define a base price from which the rest of the characteristics are subtracted or added. An example from the infinite variants: Room X with base price of 89 % taxes, fees, etc., 15% taxes, 13.35 % promotions, campaigns, 10% promotion, 8.9 % cancellations, 100% Calculated sales price 93.45 Cancellation price 93.45 Hotel availability It is important to understand how your hotel will be positioned in front of other competence hotels. The Blockchain will be feed through real validated user experiences. With these validated experiences your hotel will be positioned in the Blockchain. Here we are showing the main variables that will be taken into account in the hotel positioning: User experiences Cancellation rate Images and information provided 5 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
These hotel experiences are collected once the user has enjoyed the hotel experience. As a reward of the hotel experience provided, the user receives Hotelcoins. Booking Now we have the product loaded, as well as the price, promotions and policies of cancellation and positioning. As a hotel chain, you will be able to have one or n Hotelbyte addresses to receive HotelCoin payments. How to participate Beta Phase In order to join us you just have to contact us via email partners@hotelbyte.org, indicating a date and a place (a virtual conference if possible) and we will respond you immediately to arrange a meeting with the contacts you specify us. We have defined in our roadmap a beta phase to be able to work with hotel chains. With the aim of nourishing the project with real hotel product. And show the project in a practical way. In addition, in this beta phase the hoteliers (receptionists, etc.) and end users will have a tool to be able to expose all their improvements and report any problem detected in the process. Guarantee The hotel has to be willing to offer a guarantee in case of exception, to guarantee the service to the user and with the sale of the same. For this, it will be specified directly with the hotel or hotel chain's address to define the best option for all. FAQs Surely you have a lot of doubts and uncertainties that we will list below, anyway these questions can be found updated in our FAQ. https://hotelbyte.org#faq 6 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
I find this project difficult because of the current size of the industry. How is it possible to make such a big change? As any technological revolution has to be step by step, first we want to show you the concept, get into practice, and after that, we want to gather as much support as possible to expand this technology, if you help us now, tomorrow we will all win. As a hotel or hotel chain, do I have to invest a lot of capital? DO NOT! You only need 4 things: Be willing to innovate and be among the first! Have the DHI installed in each hotel or on your own servers Load your hotel product in the DHI Have a wallet with HotelCoin. It is not clear to me what I can win as a hotel? So let's sit down together, let's talk about your concerns and faced problems and we will give you the best solution. The booking website that users will use, how will it be maintained, who will be responsible? We have several plans for this web, being an open source initiative, anyone could start the same website and put their look and feel to start selling the hotels available on the network. Doing that has a cost that is shared directly between the hotel and the foundation to guarantee the maintainability of the network. Initial and medium term plan: The foundation will provide a DAPP. Long-term plan: Hotels or intermediaries that want to support the foundation, can create their own DAPP based on our network providing them with more functionality or specializing. In any case, the foundation will be always the responsible and all its collaborators. As a hotel you will contribute indirectly by being connected to our network. What are HotelCoins? Please read the HotelCoins section 7 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
Will the customer's data be safe? Yes, the hotel booking is never finalized in the public Blockchain, but it ends up being the private one of the hotel chain or hotel. This allows the transactions to be public but the private data is only accessible for the hotel chain or hotel. Is the payment transaction immediate? It is immediate as long as the Hotelbyte network is healthy. If the DHI fails, what can I do? There is a chat support and a FAQ to solve all your problems. DHI is a DAPP (distributed app) so the longer the number of hotels or servers you have with the private network running, the greater tolerance to failures. USERS As a user and as a consumer of hotel bookings, you will take advantage of not having to do endless searches or not having to take Byzantine decisions. In addition to being able to write your experience directly to the hotel, the quality of the hotel offered will increase and you will be rewarded immediately. That is, if you are looking for good prices, with this project you will be able to obtain them, and if the price does not matter to you but what the service is the important for you, also, sign up for the Hotelbyte movement! How to participate Beta Phase As a user you will have a DAPP to search for hotel availability, filter by your preferences and make a hotel booking in a very simple process. We show you below the simple hotel booking process: 8 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
These screens are in beta phase and they are not real bookings, so your hotelcoins will be automatically returned. But we need you to take a look and provide us your feedback as a user. In exchange for your feedback, you will get more hotelcoins. Please give us your feedback about our DAPP in the forum or submit for feature suggestions. We will give you rewards! FAQS What is a DAPP? It is a distributed application that will allow you to access any Blockchain content. 9 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
INTERMEDIARIES If you are an intermediary, your role in the final phase of this project, with the current business model, it is no longer needed. But as a Blockchain hotel foundation we want the transition to be for everyone, therefore we study different concepts to take part of the conversion: Step 1: Hotel migration with direct contracts with the intermediary to the Blockchain This migration would have a commission for the intermediary that would be reduced gradually (creating a token in our network). Step 2: Adhesion to the foundation as an active part. You, as an intermediary, that have the experience and production capacity, can join the foundation to expand this technology. Either providing power to build private Blockchain networks for each hotel chain, or helping to maintain and make progress the hotel booking interfaces. Your reward / benefit will be studied according to each case and contribution. But think that you could convert yourself and you could be benefited, simply by maintaining a healthy network for the hotel to sell and positioning your networks that are the best, etc. The final objective is that the intermediaries will convert themselves, providing creativity and power to the foundation. Creating an ecosystem where we all work to provide added value, and the prices will be in charged by the owners of the hotels! FAQS What will happen with TTOO, travel agencies, etc.? The goal of this project is to break drastically with the current hotel booking model. But we are aware that such a change is very complicated due to the strength of the current hotel industry. For this reason, the TTOO and travel agencies need to see this project as an evolution in the hotel business and reconvert themselves. This reconversion may take several years, and surely there is a lot of skepticism and there is a lot of people who do not want to participate. This is a normal situation, due to they are currently earning a lot of money, we are aware that we are talking about multi-million dollar businesses. But they are at risk of losing these multi-million dollar businesses if they ignore this project. Through this project we want to give hotels what they need and hotels will start to have more competitive prices and better experiences. Therefore we encourage you to join and collaborate to create a new future in the industry. 10 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
How to participate Beta Phase In order to join us you just have to contact us via email partners@hotelbyte.org, indicating a date and a place (a virtual conference if possible) and we will respond you immediately to arrange a meeting with the contacts you specify us. Let's sit down together, let's talk, we can offer more to the world! WHAT/WHY HOTELCOINS? Hotelcoins (HBC), is the cryptocurrency that we have defined to move transactions in our new network. Therefore the equivalent of ETH in this network will be HBC. So we want to keep it an easy concept: We aren t a TOKEN, we are a PLATFORM, like Ethereum! You need a new address for the HBC, your Ethereum address here is not exists. To ensure the power of the network we have decided to make a fork of the Ethereum project. With the fork of Ethereum we will not be affected when Ethereum is saturated, we will extract maximum benefit from its power, we will be able to adapt to future hotel needs, etc. Therefore HotelCoins is the exchange cryptocurrency that will be used to make hotel bookings, to improve user experiences and to give power to the network. To summarize, what good will it do for me to have HotelCoins? a.k.a HBC If you are hotel: Reward your users for writing real user experiences validated by your hotel. Get bonuses to keep your product updated. Exchange them for other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or for the legal cryptocurrency in course in the future, (today for money). 11 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
If you are a user: Make hotel and hotel services bookings. Get rewards for writing real user experiences of you at the hotel (subject to hotel validation). Exchange them for other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or for the legal cryptocurrency in course in the future, (today for money). If you are an intermediary: Reinvest it by publishing features in the Hotelbyte network. Exchange them for other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or for the legal cryptocurrency in course in the future, (today for money). Will this cycle of supply and demand be enough? Without your participation there is no revolution, but to guarantee the continuous flow, it is imperative that the hotel provide rewards to its users. This reward can be in the form of promotions, exchange of written user experiences or hotel recommendations to other potential users. This point is one of the premises of the DHI when loading a hotel product or when obtaining the profit of the booked room. (This point is explained in the Booking section of the hotel). HOW TO GET HOTELCOINS? Mining: Each Hotelbyte block rewards with aprox. 9 HBC Official pool (see appendix.) Exchanges: You will get HBC coming soon on different exchanges. We was requested to Poloniex and BTC-Alpha, but we need grow up as community to make it fast. So follow us on Twitter :) https://twitter.com/hotelbyte 12 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n
Hotel experiences: You will get HBC for your verified experience at the hotel. Help us: You will get HBC if you follow us, we going to create some contest for that. ROADMAP Read here https://hotelbyte.org#roadmap. APPENDIX Source code https://github.com/hotelbyte Discord (Official community channel) https://discord.gg/c2nxajv DHI (Explorer, Wallet, Intranet, Hotel Bookings) Releases https://github.com/hotelbyte/distributed-hotel-interface/releases Official mining pool https://hbc.openminingpool.org TEAM Please visit our official website to meet our team: https://hotelbyte.org#team 13 P a g e C o p y r i g h t 2018 H o t e l B y t e F o u n d a t i o n