Have you ever been disappointed by any experience that you had while travelling? I know that I have, I have spent hundreds of hours researching for a destination, the food, the places, the accommodation, the local culture and every little detail that I can think before I start my journey.
Don't get me wrong, I love to feel the building of expectation about a place before I get there. The problem that I've found often, is that the expectations don't match with the reality. When I've found myself in a place that is not as good as the reviews I read, or in a place full of tourist where the only thing to do is buy souvenirs, I feel very frustrated.
In the other hand, every time that I've lived in a city for enough time, I've learned about the secret spots and tricks that only locals would normally know. While I was living in New Zealand, I followed the advice of local to take the public transport to get to an incredible place with several hiking paths and some of the most amazing landscapes that I've seen in my life.
In Québec City, I crossed the river Saint Laurent on a ferry that allowed me to see the Château Frontenac in all its greatness. I went to an undervalued restaurant across the river where I ate the best poutine that I've tried in my life. The best of it was that in both cases, I didn't have to pay the crown jewels for a day-long experience because I was following the recommendations of local people.
Sadly, I don't have friends in everywhere city that I visit, to have experiences like this. But luckily, there is a platform that is revolutionizing the travel industry, connecting travellers with local people all around the world. Cool Cousin, an app working on a decentralized blockchain, that lets travellers search for local experts with similar preferences to be their personal travel agent. It's like the Uber or Airbnb of travel agencies!!!
Enhanced travel experiences powered by a decentralized P2P travel agency, optimized for the millennial traveller, Cool Cousin's white paper.
The black market for internet reviews.
Nowadays, most of the information we have available is from review websites that rank places based on algorithms. I've worked for big hotels in Cancún, and I know from experience that most of the hotels, restaurants or touristic sites are trying to rig these websites for their benefit.
In 2015, an Italian newspaper invented a restaurant and started to feed fake reviews to Tripadvisor, after one month the non-existent establishment was rated as the best place in town. 1 This lead to a fine to Tripadvisor for $500,000 due to improper business practices. 2
But is not only business who try to profit from the review market. During 2014, an English man faced legal action for trying to blackmail an establishment in exchange for a good review. 3
No matter how many time anyone spends researching a destination, the information available nowadays is bias by the interests of big companies or reviewers that take advantage of the flaws of centralized websites like TripAdvisor.
Cool Cousin, an approach to improve travel experiences.
What would you do if you're visiting a city where one of your friends live? This friend would be your more reliable source of information about where to go, what to visit or where to eat. What Cool Cousin provides is the closest to a local friend; aka 'Cousin', that will be your local advice in around 65+ cities of the world.
Founded as an antidote to the growing frustration experienced when trying to discover relevant places and activities in a new city, Cool Cousin directly connects travellers to like-minded locals -aka Cousins- for an open and unbiased exchange of treasured local knowledge, Cool Cousin's white paper.
With just a few clicks, you can connect with a cousin that shares your tastes and hobbies, someone that you can rely on, to get the best advice and enjoy the city to the maximum.
Each cousin has a distinct guide to the city with their favourite neighboorhood spots and local business available online and offline. Traveller searching for something specific, like cheap tickets to a football match or a nearby bar hosting a cool local band, could also reach out to their cousin directly for a personal on-demand assistance, Cool Cousin's white paper.
Taking it to the next level, Cool Cousin implementing blockchain technology.
Decentralizing Cool Cousin gives it an advantage over the status quo of the industry. With transparency and immutability as two of the key characteristics of the blockchain, Cool Cousin guarantees that there is no single authority that decides that a recommendation is better than other, protecting the community and its economy from a corruptible and manipulatable authority. This implementation will help to prevent the abuse that we see nowadays in the reviews industry.
Decentralization gives substance to one of the key tenets of Cool Cousins, namely, that there is no single source of truth when it comes to taste, Cool Cousin's white paper.
Cousins are incentivized to create quality content in the form of travel services and unique local information that can be exchanged for open source cryptographic tokens named CUZ. Cousins offer 'concierge' services like tailored itineraries, online availability, pre-travel consulting, hotel booking, restaurant reservation, events tickets, etc. In the other hand, travellers have the option of tipping a cousin via cheap micropayments using the token CUZ.
Opportunities for business and organizations.
Cool cousins offer a lot of opportunities for third-party entities like municipalities, local events, special offers, promotional products and more, who can build on top of Cool Cousin's superior application capabilities.
Municipalities promote their city through Cool Cousins with branded map layers containing special events, tourist services and media promotions. Social events, festivals, seminars, conferences and other location-based and/or time-limited communities can add map layers to the platform, Cool Cousin's white paper.
Timeline.
The best part of it is that Cool Cousins is already a running project, It has been named 'The best new travel app', in USA Today in 2017 and it has reached the ICO launch stage.
The funds raised during the ICO are planned to be invested in research & development, marketing & sales, administration, operations, legal expenses and contingency.
In order to kickstart a vibrant community of passionate travellers and locals, the distribution will be designed to offer as many people possible the opportunity to participate, Cool Cousin's white paper.
A disruptive technology for the travel industry.
Just as companies like Uber or Airbnb, Cool Cousins is set to be a game changer for the travel industry in the near future. Travellers will have the opportunity to use the knowledge, network and resources of local people to improve their experiences while Cousins get rewards for providing services that nowadays can't be easily provided by regular people.
Those who disrupt their industries change consumer behaviour, alter economics, and transform lives, Heather Simmons.
More Information & Resources:
- Cool Cousin Website
- Cool Cousin WhitePaper
- Cool Cousin Telegram
- Cool Cousin Reddit
- Cool Cousin BitcoinTalk
- Cool Cousin Twitter
- Cool Cousin Facebook
- Cool Cousin Linkedin
- Cool Cousin Medium
- Cool Cousin Instagram
Post written as entry for an OriginalWorks contest.
cc2018