CHAIN4TRAVEL, founded by three travel veterans, has raised seed funding of Sfr4.3 million for the development of its blockchain-based travel platform, known as Camino, as well as chase growth for the company.
The Switzerland-based business combines the experience and expertise of Ralf Usbeck, who previously founded TravelTainment and Peakwork, Thomas Stirnimann, former CEO of Hotelplan, and Pablo Castillo, former CIO of Hotelplan.
Chain4Travel wants to build a blockchain platform for B2B and B2C leisure travel products. The ideas is for tourism partners to be able to trade and purchase services on the platform, ranging from hotel rooms and rental cars to a cup of coffee on a flight.
Envisioning a new kind of inflight shopping experience
All information about products and services including health and safety and updates about any restrictions will be fed into the platform and available as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The idea for the future is for the blockchain to be managed by travel industry partners with Chain4Travel transferring the intellectual property and financial reserves into a foundation.
The Camino token pre-sale is planned for July/August while an initial coin offering (ICO) is scheduled for the end of 2022.
The project says it has won more than 50 supporters from the travel industry worldwide and more than 100 partners from the tourism and IT sectors are expected to develop and access applications on the new network this year. In addition to Baar (Switzerland) and Düsseldorf (Germany), other Chain4Travel subsidiaries are currently being set up in the USA, Asia and South America.
Ralf Usbeck: “Launching at the right time.”
“We are launching Chain4Travel at the right time. Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionise the global travel industry. We have the support of leading partners and experts in the international travel and technology business on our side to help us take off in full swing starting this year,” says Usbeck, CEO of Chain4Travel.
Stirnimann, COO of Chain4Travel, adds: “The enormous potential of blockchain technology enables the travel industry to adopt new ways of thinking and visions in the distribution and marketing of travel products. The development will move very fast and rapidly change the processes we are used to.”
Note: The test environment, “Columbus” is live and can be accessed and used by developers at https://wallet.camino.foundation.
