Travel/tourism is a huge market which accounts for 10% of global GDP and creates one in 10 jobs. At present, the industry is highly centralized, with over 95% of the US online travel agent market belonging to just two companies. This creates a heavily biased environment where high ratings and recommendations depend solely on the commercial decisions of the dominant players.
Consumers and travelers are overwhelmed with lopsided content, mostly irrelevant to their tastes and requirements. Regardless of how hard you try or how ingenious your search queries, chances are you will waste your vacation time in mediocre places on top of spending a fortune.
Cool Cousin is a platform that aims to change the rules of the travel/tourism game by using blockchain technology to break the monopoly of big players and offer travelers a variety of affordable services of premium quality while also creating a source of income for people around the world.
Cool Cousin was founded in 2016 as a travel company financed with venture capital. Now more than 500,000 travelers all over the world use its friendly app to get on-demand recommendations from locals. The company is experiencing double-digit monthly growth and is on its way to becoming a major player in the travel industry.
What's so cool about Cool Cousin?
Cool Cousin is based on a community of contributors registered with the platform. They earn extra income, monetizing their unique knowledge about the place they live in, while users get an affordable service due to reduced overhead costs and low transaction fees.
The information provided by the contributors is unbiased and trustworthy as smart contracts and a blockchain system limit the ability to tailor the recommendations to the commercial needs of the company.
“The community is responsible for itself, and the better it functions as content creator and service provider, the more its community members earn,” said Nagler, co-founder and CEO of Cool Cousin. “The implementation of this mechanism is set in stone, and the rules are clear for everyone and cannot be changed under the terms and conditions by a whim of the company. We are convinced that this is an amazing solution for every community-based platform which wants to see its community thrives in the long term. I believe that we’ll see many more to come — and not just in the travel space, but in every space.”
Cool Cousin Tokenomics
Cool Cousin’s ecosystem is fueled by CUZ tokens, which are the only legit means of payment on the platform. Users of the app will need tokens to unlock access to a variety of services (including concierge and travel agent services), leave tips, and make other contributions.
The community members also receive payments in CUZ tokens distributed from the Community pool, with the rewards based on the amount and quality of services they provide to platform users. Users can easily exchange fiat currency for CUZ and vice versa from a built-in wallet in the Cool Cousin app.
“Like most payments over the blockchain, by using the CUZ token as a payment method we guarantee faster and cheaper transactions which will ultimately lead (hand in hand with the self-sustaining community) to a premium service affordable to all,” Nagler said. “But the CUZ token is not just for payments — it is at the core of Cool Cousin’s reward engine, designed to incentivize community participants to push forward, grow, and constantly upgrade the platform. Think of it as a sort of mining — community participants ‘mine’ CUZ tokens by contributing to the success and quality of the platform.”
Cool Cousin ICO details
Cool Cousin’s public crowdsale starts on May 15, but the project is close to reaching its hard cap of 17,500 ETH thanks to the support of early investors in the pre-sale round. The total supply is limited to 300 million CUZ tokens, with only 33% available for sale. If you want to participate in the project financing, you'd better hurry up as over 90% of tokens have been sold out.
Refer to the official website or subscribe to updates on Twitter or Telegram to get more detailed information about the Cool Cousin project.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
