Is Cool Cousin the Best Decentralized Travel Agency Ever?

Is Cool Cousin the Best Decentralized Travel Agency Ever?

Traveling is supposed to be fun and stress relieving. But sometimes visiting a foreign country where people share a different culture and language can be a nightmare. Cool Cousin, a mobile app that brings people from different cities around the world together to share information about local destinations. It is helping to make traveling easy anywhere. On top of that, they are holding an ICO.

What’s an ICO?

An ICO is short of for initial coin offering, a crowdfunding financial model common with cryptocurrency and blockchain startups. Slightly similar to IPOs (Initial Public Offerings), ICOs are meant to fundraise for a project while giving investors an opportunity to earn from the success of a company. But instead of selling shares to investors like IPOs do, ICO companies develop tokens that potentially hold value.

Cool Cousin’s Features

Developed in 2016 by an Israel-based startup, Cool Cousin is purely a platform for bringing travelers together with the people in the best position to share information about local joints: people who live around. It’s an app for travelers, local travelers who are not experts in tourist locations in a country and experts as well.

The app currently boasts of supporting 65 cities and thousands of cousins who share information about:

• Best restaurants
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• Best museums
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• Parks
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• Salons and spa joints
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• Directions to any part of the city
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• Offer customized travel guides and services

Community Members Run Things

Instead of relying on information about a location from one person, Cool Cousin allows every local member to chip in and offer visitors guidance about the city. Every member can contribute to questions asked or offer guidance about any topic they are an expert in. As such, this app works more like Quora, allowing people who want to travel to a foreign city to ask its locals anything of relevance. In summary, being a cousin on this app comes with the following roles:

• Creating travel guides about your city
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• Answering questions
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• Provide travel suggestions in your city- this could be about local museums, food joints or salons
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• Evaluate information shared by new cousins to ensure all information shared about your city is fact-based
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• Resolve conflicts when local cousins share conflicting reviews about local tourist spots

What’s better with the ICO?

Cool Cousin is a refined product that has already been tested to work. With their new resolve to work things around the blockchain, users are bound to have an even better experience. The app’s community will consist of the company managers, contributors, and guests but they will have rewarding roles based on how they operate:

The Community Is Expanding

Ever since the company hinted of plans to hold an ICO, thousands of people have been seeking its services. There are people interested in learning how they will earn through the ICO but a majority of new members are curious travelers who are deeply interested in engaging with existing cousins. According to the company:

• There has been an increase of new members by 250% since September 2017.
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• Interactions among cousins increased by 310% during the same period.
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• In total, Cool Cousin has experienced a growth rate of 220%.

The increasing growth rate is attributed to the company’s extensive marketing campaigns especially since they announced of plans to hold an ICO. If you are new to the cryptocurrency industry, ICOs provide investors an opportunity to make money albeit with acknowledgment it’s a risk. Learn more details about the Cool Cousin ICO before you make a decision.

Cousins Will Also Make Money

Currently, the app works in such a way that cousins simply provide information for free. The community members are avid travelers who would love to help tourists when they visit their cities. While the model is good, it deters more people from committing their time to help tourists. The integration of tokens and blockchain technology will change all that. Tourists looking for information will pay to find services on the app using tokens. Some of these tokens will be shared with cool cousins who provide the most helpful information.

Cousins will be at liberty to use their earned tokens in any of the following ways:

• Trade them on exchanges for cryptocurrencies like bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.
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• Hold them and sell them after gaining value- the tokens will be limited so that when demand for them increases, their value goes up as well.
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• Use the tokens to gain information about another city or redeem their tokens for special offers from the company.
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• Professional cousins will work as travel agents, offering bespoke services to tourists visiting their localities.
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• Experienced cousins will earn the title of editors. They will validate new content and quality of photos and will be rewarded using CUZ tokens.

Growth Rate

The company integrated the blockchain to overcome the limitations of centralized management. By making the app community focused, people from any city around the world can become a cousin. As the number of cousins in a city increases, the company will appoint an editor and help that community grow.

This way, the role of Cool Cousin’s managers will be limited to marketing and general management only. At the same time, interest in the company will grow because everyone benefits from the ecosystem. Tourists and get quality information from locals and the information providers will earn rewards.

If the company goes ahead to partner with stakeholders such as hotel owners, major travel agencies and tourist destination managers, the app could become the best thing to happen in the travel industry.

Smart Contracts

Like most blockchain startups, Cool Cousin will lock funds in smart contracts that only release the funds after fulfilling specific commands. The contract, for example, won’t release funds to a new member. However, the smart contracts will allow professional cousins who have already earned tokens to withdraw their funds to a personal wallet. This will eliminate the need for third parties like banks when earning and using rewards.

Summary

Cool Cousin is one of the many startups integrating their services with blockchain technology to better service delivery. Fortunately, the company already has a solid user base. They have a service that works and only needs a proper marketing to take it to the next level.

For investors, the ICO being held by Cool Cousin offers a great opportunity to make money if you believe in their services. However, it’s also a risky investment. Research widely before making any investment decisions.