I'd like to share some aspects of why Explorio (XPL); an upcoming ICO, fills unmet needs in the travel industry and differentiates from available options.
For avid travelers, there is no resource as valuable as reviews and recommendations from others who have ventured to the same destinations. Reviews have the ability to shape a person’s trip from beginning to end, ushering them to the best accommodations, restaurants, museums, and other places of interest to suit their needs and preferences. Additionally, reviews help travelers avoid experiences that could ruin their trip, warning them about things like terrible service or unclean rooms.
The importance of travel reviews cannot be understated, which is why TripAdvisor, the largest platform dedicated to travel reviews, has amassed over 570 million user-submitted reviews and opinions on its platform as of 2017, with an average of 270 new reviews posted every minute. 79% of TripAdvisor users will read 6-12 reviews before booking a hotel, and are more likely to follow recommendations when they have more reviews.
Extreme Emotions Lead to Skewed Reviews
Unfortunately, many travelers have found that online reviews don’t always reflect the reality of the places they visit. This is because the average reviewer will only leave feedback when they feel the urgency to complain about something, or when they want to share feelings of extreme happiness or disappointment. When the majority of reviews only represent polarizing positive or negative experiences, this often paints a skewed, inaccurate picture of what a place is really like.
This is why we have brought together a team of avid travelers, technologists, and blockchain enthusiasts to launch Explorio (XPL), the world’s first decentralized travel review platform. We believe that Explorio (XPL) will bring more diversity, accuracy, and authenticity to online reviewing by bringing travel reviews onto the blockchain.
With Explorio (XPL), we plan to address what we believe is the biggest problem causing the lack of diversity in reviews, which is that mainstream platforms don’t effectively reward contributors for their work. This is in part because these platforms like TripAdvisor and Yelp benefit from such dominance in the space that content creators who want to share their experiences would struggle to get the same visibility posting them somewhere else.
By not offering useful rewards, these platforms provide little motivation for users to share the everyday experiences they have while traveling, which we believe would provide the most value to other travelers. Landmarks, museums, and scenery are memorable in the form of photos and Instagram stories, but it’s things like finding beautiful local artwork on a cafe’s walls or a favorite California IPA on tap at a bar in Krakow that leave the strongest impact on our overall impressions of a place, not just what the Pyramids or the Mona Lisa look like up close. It’s the finer details that we truly remember about a place long after we’ve left.
Unlike Any Other Travel Site, Explorio Will Motivate Users With Cryptocurrency Rewards
With Explorio (XPL), we will create a new ecosystem for travel reviews that will reward contributors with Explorio (XPL) tokens for sharing their experiences. These reviews might cover everything from the aggressive cats who live at a hostel to the most time-efficient way to haggle with merchants at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. We believe that this will bring much-needed diversity to the reviews on our platform, differentiating us from the polar masses of one-star and five-star reviews that are found on platforms like TripAdvisor, Google, and Yelp. By offering users a genuine incentive in Explorio tokens (XPL) we hope to motivate them to leave reviews for even the most humble experiences, creating diversity in the reviews and thus enhancing the utility of Explorio.
Additionally, community members will be rewarded with tokens for engaging on our platform and curating content. This will consist of up-voting and down-voting content to help determine if a review or comment brings value to the community, and leaving comments themselves.
Explorio's (XPL) business model aims to provide the following:
Travel bookings is a feature of our platform which allows users to book travel services (hotels, flights, guides, tours, etc.) on Explorio via our partners. Our long term vision is that our users will be able to use the Explorio token (XPL) as a payment method for most of these bookings.
Review boosting is a process where businesses spend tokens to incentivize reviews of their establishment. The incentive tokens are distributed regardless of whether the reviews are positive or negative. Review boosting is an effective means to get more attention, but in no way a means to secure more positive reviews.
Incentivized Q&A is a way for users to incentivize speedy answers to specific travel-related questions. It allows users to attach a token reward for answering their questions fast and in a helpful way.
Digital goods marketplace is a place where travelers can buy and sell digital travel-related goods and services. As opposed to having to market and distribute their premium content themselves, they will be able to publish it on our platform and let Explorio take care of the rest.
Explorio seeks to disrupt and transform the online travel review landscape and bring diversity to travel content through tokenization on the blockchain. The pre-Sale is currently in progress and the ICO is targeted for July. To learn about how to participate, you can visit Explorio (XPL)