Nite Tokens: Why On-Chain Vacation Rental Data Will Benefit the Industry

On January 30, 2024, Dtravel announced a much anticipated upgrade to the ecosystem’s booking contract design allowing for vacation rental booking data to be minted on the Polygon PoS (Proof-of-Stake) network by way of Nite Tokens. In effect, the innovative upgrade now enables the tokenization of vacation rental nights, turning a real-world asset (RWA) into an on-chain token. Introducing Nite Tokens to the Dtravel ecosystem is just one component of a much broader vision, one in which the goal is to significantly improve trust, distribution, and connectivity for the vacation rental industry.

In this post we dive deeper into the concept of Nite Tokens, the reason we’ve introduced them to the Dtravel ecosystem, how they form the building blocks to an innovative database for the vacation rental industry, and why we believe they will play an integral role in helping to shape a better future for travel.

TLDR;

At the end of January Dtravel announced a much anticipated upgrade to the ecosystem's booking contracts that now enables the tokenization of vacation rental nights, turning RWAs into Nite Tokens on Polygon PoS.

Here's the TLDR:

• Nite Tokens: Nite Tokens are an immutable digital receipt representing ownership of booked nights on the blockchain.
• Nite Protocol: Dtravel is developing the Nite Protocol, a decentralized database and API aimed at improving trust, distribution and connectivity. Nite Tokens are an essential component to the Nite Protocol.
• Benefits for Vacation Rental Operators: Nite Tokens bring vacation rental data on-chain, a foundational first step toward using the Nite Protocol. As the best source of truth, Nite Tokens will act as hard-code trust signals, allowing for innovative review systems and opportunities related to guest screening, marketing and revenue streams.
• Benefits for Travelers: Travelers gain from verifiable booking data, flexible booking options through token transferability, and the potential for Nite Tokens to act as collectible items commemorating their stays.
• Opportunities for Builders and Developers: The open nature of the Nite Protocol encourages innovation, making it easier for developers to solve problems and bring efficiencies to the vacation rental industry.
• Advancements in Distribution: The Nite Protocol offers a unique open distribution system for vacation rental listings, enhancing accessibility to various channels that will support listing visibility for operators.

What are Nite Tokens?

Nite Tokens are digital assets based on the ERC-721 open standard for non-fungible tokens on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible blockchains. You can think of Nite Tokens as an immutable digital receipt, representing the right to stay in a property for a specific night. Since Nite Tokens exist on public blockchains, anyone can verifiably prove the existence of a specific booking.

As a result of the recent upgrade, Nite Tokens are automatically transferred on behalf of an operator (who has a digital wallet connect) through their booking contract to the traveler’s digital wallet, each time a fiat or crypto booking is processed, creating a trustless system for recording data without reliance on third-parties.

We’ll continue to explore the concept of Nite Tokens and why they will become a main component to the Nite Protocol.

What is the Nite Protocol?

Dtravel, alongside a number of soon to be announced founding partners, are leading the development of the Nite Protocol, a decentralized blockchain database and API for the vacation rental industry.

The Nite Protocol addresses the vacation rental industry’s inefficiencies, disjointed nature and prohibitive development costs. By introducing a singular API connection for both listing and reservation data, it effectively dismantles isolated data silos in favor of a cohesive system where data is transparent, accurate, and accessible to all industry participants.

Nite Tokens are a foundational component of the Nite Protocol. They serve as an immutable digital receipt, allowing anyone to verifiably prove who holds the right to stay at a given property. Ownership of Nite Tokens will signal to anyone whether or not property nights for specific listing are available, preventing issues related to double bookings.

We’ll be sharing more information about the Nite Protocol including a litepaper and ways for contributors and builders to get involved.

How Nite Tokens and the Nite Protocol Will Revolutionize the Travel Industry

In the following section, we’ll illustrate the value of Nite Tokens and how their existence will contribute to the first open distribution and trust system in travel.

Although development is ongoing, we felt it important to communicate why Nite Tokens are a significant innovation and how the Nite Protocol will not only add to their utility, but improve trust, transparency, connectivity and introduce new opportunities across the travel industry.

Vacation Rental Operators

With the recent smart contract upgrade, all fiat and crypto bookings are now tokenized on-chain in the form of Nite Tokens, representing the first truly verifiable and open ledger for booking data within the vacation rental industry.

Here’s why this matters for property managers and vacation rental operators:

Hard-Coded Trust Signal

Nite Tokens are hard-coded trust signals, allowing vacation rental operators to relay this information to prospective guests, providing legitimacy and verifiable proof of their history as an operator, thereby improving the conversion rate of future peer-to-peer bookings. This data could also be used across the broader real estate investment market, improving the transparency of cash flows a property generates from short-term rental activities.

• Nite Tokens can be used as hard-coded trust signals to improve direct booking conversions.
• The number of completed on-chain bookings can be displayed on a direct booking site or on a specific listing. This would allow prospective guests to verify on-chain how many bookings an operator has processed or how many times a specific listing has been booked.
• Nite Tokens could also be used to improve the legitimacy of a short-term rental property in the resale market. Sellers could share their on-chain bookings with prospective investors and accelerate the sales process.

Verified On-Chain Reviews

Through similar technology, reviews can be connected to Nite Tokens, creating a system for authentic reviews with less need for a third-party.

• Reviews connected to a completed on-chain booking would be more valuable than those from traditional platforms as they present the opportunity to eliminate fraudulent activity.
• Prospective guests would know that any review they read is associated with a specific booking and could have only been written by the individual who completed the booking.
• Reviews would be owned by an operator's wallet address and not subject to platform lock-in, meaning they can be used anywhere.

Guest Screening

Vacation rental operators will be able to see the number of on-chain bookings a prospective guest has made, and the reviews they’ve received before accepting a booking.

• Nite Tokens allow vacation rental operators to verify the booking history of a guest (e.g. number of nights booked, average spend, on-chain reviews)
• This also makes it possible to segment specific guest types and push offers to guests that match a business's target persona.

Supercharged Distribution

With the launch of the Nite Protocol, the data from any vacation rental listing powered by Dtravel will be public, creating the first open distribution system in the travel industry. Subject to a vacation rental operator's approval, developers, builders, community members and existing distributors or channels will be able to access this data and market the property listings, effectively creating new forms of search. This means listings can be discovered across channels that previously would have been impossible or very difficult with legacy travel infrastructure. To make this all possible, property listing data is secured in a decentralized file storage system like IPFS with the availability of room nights being dictated by the owner of Nite Token, preventing calendar availability issues like double bookings from occurring.

• Enable the open distribution of your properties to new and existing channels improving the exposure of your direct booking website.
• Control who has access to distribute your property listings and the conditions of distribution.

Incremental Revenue

Through the Nite Protocol each night booked is represented as a digital receipt. Since vacation rental operators own their data and booking contracts they will be able to configure the conditions of Nite Token transferability, enabling travelers to buy or sell property nights through a secondary market.

Transferability of Nite Tokens could provide vacation rental operators with the ability to:

• Earn incremental revenue (royalties) based on how transferability of Nite tokens is set up. More relaxed transferability conditions allow for the potential to earn revenue with each transfer of a Nite Token, while more strict transferability conditions mean you earn less with each Nite Token transfer.
• Avoid operational headaches revolving around refunds and cancellations.
  

Travelers

Hard-coded Trust Signal

Travelers who consider booking any vacation rental listing using the Nite Protocol will be able to make an informed decision by reading the data made possible by Nite Tokens.

• If an operator wishes to share the data, travelers will be able to see the number of on-chain bookings a particular listing has received.
• Travelers will be able to read and verify the credibility of previous bookings and the reviews associated with them.

Booking Flexibility

Travelers who book any vacation rental listing that has adopted the Nite Protocol will receive Nite Tokens in their digital wallet. If a vacation rental operator decides to enable transferability of their listing’s Nite Tokens then a traveler can sell their nights booked in the event they are unable to complete the stay. Transferability of Nite Tokens offers unparalleled flexibility when it comes to travelers deciding on whether or not to complete booking in the first place.

• Nite Tokens provide travelers with an immutable record of the nights booked at a specific property.
• Nite Tokens can be tradeable, meaning they can be purchased by another traveler who wishes to complete a stay.
• Travelers could earn revenue from the sale of Nite Tokens, potentially recouping their initial expense, or in the case of a valuable stay, earning a profit.

Collectibility

Nite Tokens may act not just as a digital receipt, but also as a digital collectible that allows them to commemorate a stay. Over time, a traveler’s collection of Nite Tokens (booking history) could become quite valuable.

• Show off past nights booked and build a portfolio of Nite Token collectibles.
• Monetize past stay data by making Nite Token data available to third parties for remarketing purposes.

Builders & Developers

The Nite Protocol, the world’s first smart-contract based protocol for the vacation rental industry, will offer builders, developers, and entrepreneurs the opportunity to leverage publicly accessible data to launch new innovations.

As an immutable digital receipt, Nite Tokens make open-sourced development possible. This agreed upon representation of property-nights, allows innovators from across the globe to build universal solutions that anyone using the protocol can adopt.

Here are just a few examples of how builders and developers could contribute as a result of Nite Tokens:

• Smart-Contracts - Builders and developers can earn bounties by innovating on open-sourced smart contracts that improve the Nite Protocol. In addition, they can create new smart contracts that improve the experience for the larger community.
• Protocol Infrastructure - Builders and developers can create and monetize protocol-related infrastructure that the broader community can use. This includes reputation explorers, booking explorers, advanced analytics tools, and more.
• New Clients - Builders and developers can launch clients built on the Nite Protocol that operators and travelers interact with. Such clients can include digital wallet infrastructure, crypto payments infrastructure, direct booking tooling and more.

Channels

Distribution is one of the problems that can be solved by the Nite Protocol. As the world’s first open distribution system for vacation rental property listings, the Nite Protocol offers existing and new channels incredible opportunities for supply growth and innovation.

Without Nite Tokens, issues related to calendar availability would persist. Leveraging Nite Tokens as a foundational single-source of truth, various channels can leverage the Nite Protocol in many ways:

• Grow Supply - Use the Nite Protocol, existing channels will be able to grow their supply by adding any property listing with open distribution permissions.
• Bootstrap New Channels - Centralized marketplaces are protective over their APIs and supply to create a competitive moat. This is not the case with the Nite Protocol. Existing channels that have difficulty gaining access to supply are able to leverage property listings using the Nite Protocol to increase bookable listings.
• Innovation on Curation/Search - Open accessibility to vacation rental property listings offers innovators the ability to introduce new search and curation products, creating better experiences to guests, while increasing visibility for operators.

Supply Partners

An open standard protocol for vacation rental listings means improved connectivity across the industry. This translates to significant cost savings, reduced overhead and new revenue opportunities for supply partners.

Similar to the sections above, the Nite Tokens and the Nite Protocol’s domain specific language, Dusk, allow partners to eliminate unnecessary spend and focus instead on value contribution:

• Cost Savings - Supply partners can move away from endless API connections and redundant databases while also creating conditions for their users to build better direct booking businesses.
• Standardized Language - One standardized language supply partners can use to easily submit and receive data from the Nite Protocol. Supply partners are incentivized to contribute expertise to the development of the language and adopt it as a new standard for the industry.
• Incremental Revenue - Supply partners can earn a percentage of the revenue from operators connected to their software that complete bookings using the Nite Protocol.

Conclusion: Revolutionizing the Vacation Rental Industry Through On-Chain Data

In conclusion, the introduction of Nite Tokens and the development of the Nite Protocol represent transformative advancements in the vacation rental industry. By tokenizing vacation rental bookings on the blockchain, Dtravel has pioneered a new era of transparency, trust, and efficiency. Nite Tokens serve as immutable digital receipts, enabling a trustless system that enhances the credibility and operational capabilities of vacation rental operators. The Nite Protocol, as the world's first open standard booking protocol, promises to address long-standing inefficiencies and open up new opportunities for innovation and connectivity across the industry. As these technologies continue to evolve and gain adoption, we can anticipate a more interconnected, transparent, and user-friendly ecosystem for all stakeholders participating in vacation rentals. The journey towards a better future for the vacation rental industry is just beginning, and Nite Tokens, along with the Nite Protocol, are poised to play a central role in shaping this promising landscape.