LockTrip saves you 23% in Istanbul

Have you been to Istanbul before? If not, it is definitely overdue! With more than 15 million citizens and a long history going back thousands of years, Istanbul is a perfect fit especially for those who are interested in history and culture.

Dolmabahce Palace

One of the architectural highlights of Istanbul is the Dolmabahce Palace. Built in 1856 by the Ottomans, this palace fulfills every criteria of beauty. At the cost of more than 35,000 kg Gold, a huge complex with 285 rooms was built on the shore to the Bosporus.

Be advised that only 25,000 visitors are allowed per day. Coming in the morning will greatly improve your chances of getting in.

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and an absolute must when you visit Istanbul. Built in 537 by the Romans, this structure served for almost a millennium as a Basilica and was quickly turned into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453.

You can quickly see how Christian and Islamic elements mix into a very unique appearance.

Enjoy the Food

Istanbul has a lot to offer from a culinary perspective. From meat lovers to vegetarians, everyone will find a delicious dish to broaden their flavor horizon.

Where to stay?

Through our 0% commission policy, we are able to offer you significant savings compared to other booking sites. Our internal price comparison analysis showed that you can expect average savings of 23% for the city of Istanbul.

Please note that this is an average, which has been calculated from a sample of many hotels. Prices for individual hotels/rooms will show significant deviation.

Below is a small selection from 1,500 Hotels in Istanbul that can be booked on our marketplace.

1. Celine Hotel

→ View on our Marketplace

2. Seven Hills Palace Hotel

→ View on our Marketplace

3. Neorion Hotel

→ View on our Marketplace

You can browse all 1,500 Hotels in Istanbul here.

Did you know that you can earn up to $100 for sharing your experience after booking with LockTrip? Here is how it works.

Team LockTrip wishes you a great stay in Istanbul!
Locktrip saves you 23% in Istanbul

Announcing #LOC Economy 2.0

LockTrip was born out of an idea drafted back at the beginning of 2017. An idea for creating a new generation shared economy that could potentially make an impact and bring a new meaning to the blockchain as a technology and to the global hospitality industry.

Now, two and a half years later, as we are in a culmination stage of the product prototyping period, we are closer than ever to turn the new generation economic model into a reality. The concept that originally was just text in a whitepaper, has been put to the test and was validated by thousands of users on our marketplace application.

Thanks to this test, we were able to gather real market data and work with the numbers in order to iterate a more robust and effective economic design that could potentially lift the project to its next level. Some of the objectives being to:

• unlock unlimited scalability potential

• minimize price volatility exposure for hosts and LockTrip as a company

• enhance adoption of LOC from hosts side

• increase the economic impact of each individual booking

• enable LOC economy to grow stronger with any force-majeure price drops as well as unrelated market oversold conditions (e.g. when LOC price drops significantly while bookings are being generated, this to have a long term beneficial effect on the economy)

• minimize costs and improve pricing on a large percentage of bookings

Introducing LOC Economy 2.0

1. Exploration of the challenges that accompany our current LOC economy. We have outlined 6 main challenges and enriched your understanding through explanatory visuals.
2. Presentation of our solutions and a detailed analysis of how they affect the challenges outlined in section 1. Comparing the efficiency of the old vs. new economy by taking in 3 key factors and providing graphical representations.
3. Summary of Impact. Listing 12 bullet points that summarize the analysis of section 2.
4. Simulations and a dynamic simulation tool for you to play with. Presenting you a total of 5 pre-set scenarios we’ve made (1 detailed focusing on user base growth with reference to affiliates and viral effect, 1 lightweight version that would be easy to play with, and 3 highly dedicated ones to showcase key effects of the new economy).
5. Conclusion and a short FAQ

Click Here to Open LOC Economy 2.0

Major changes require strong arguments. This is why we prepared a 25-page argumentation document, which leads you through our own thinking process and demonstrates how we came up with the solutions. You will notice that we worked a lot with data to verify the effectiveness of each upgrade.

To give you the same experience, we added booking volume/price simulations to the document, so that you can confirm each argument first-hand. Here is a quick overview of the document structure:

We can’t wait to get your feedback on it! Take your time though. We know that the material we present is very information-dense and requires some serious thinking to grasp all aspects of it.

We will be hosting a survey next week as soon as we have the feeling that the concept has been well-understood and discussions matured towards a general consensus.

LOCKTRIP.COM 

Why The Travel Industry Is #Blockchain 's Best Bet

In 2017, blockchain projects flourished, where ICOs managed to raise billions. 2018 was a crash year for cryptos, even though the sums raised this year were twice as high as the previous one. Blockchain projects promised a lot, however 71% of them still have no working products. The argument was that blockchain is still in its infancy, and many are supposed to deliver their products in 2019. And one of the best places to watch where blockchain will rise again is in the travel industry.

Problems we face

The travel industry is uniquely suited to benefit from blockchain. There are many different players involved, and all need to collaborate seamlessly. When someone wants to travel, they need to deal with airlines, book hotels, find activities, navigate airports and maybe rent a car. They will also have to change their currency so they can shop at their destination.

The hoteliers and airlines also need to collaborate (and compete). Besides running their own website and reservation systems, most of them have found it necessary to collaborate with Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) and Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) to land on more “supermarket shelves” globally. Running these systems adds to the costs on the end customers, but there are also many other hidden fees involved.

For one, we must consider the transaction fees and inefficiencies in the finance and banking industry, especially when different parties from different countries are involved. Another problem is the setup and integration costs that are involved when service providers need to synchronize their disparate, siloed databases. A standard travel-related transaction involves multiple service providers, from GDSs and bedbanks to end-service companies and eventually point-of-sale players. Third, we have the GDPR and the importance of security and privacy. Fourth, we have the problem of fraud, which costs the airlines $1 billion annually.

Finally, we have the “invisible costs.” Services like the GDS are costly, especially for smaller players. This makes the entry barrier significantly higher for them, which means many innovative startups are left in the dark. In addition, the data held by GDSs can be expensive and inaccessible for hoteliers, who could otherwise have more distribution options. Expedia and Priceline have a 93% duopoly, which according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association “hurts consumer choice and the small businesses in our industry, which represent some 60 percent of all the hotels in the U.S., who are struggling to compete as a result of the gouging commission rates charged by the [online travel agencies].”

Blockchain disrupts the duopoly

Blockchain removes the intermediaries and offers a decentralized system where different parties can interact without needing to trust each other, removing a lot of overhead. This has produced real results.

“Our project has outperformed the market with +200% during the bearish market,” says Nikola Alexandrov, founder of Locktrip.com , which offers global coverage to about 100,000 hotels. “The prices on our marketplace are on average approximately -19% cheaper than the cheapest alternative—booking.com.” He continues: “our prices are so cheap, we are not allowed to advertise them in Trivago.”

But the lower costs are just one of blockchain’s benefits—there are many more.

Fraud

Rita Hunter was sentenced to jail over 14 charges of fraud. Her fake travel company charged people for flight and accommodation services without actually booking them, leaving them out of pocket and without the holidays “they looked forward to and worked hard to pay for.” This is no limited incident.

According to Barry Gooch, chairman of the Prevention of Fraud in Travel campaign, “a significant issue for the travel industry has been the way criminals have been able to commit fraud as a director of one company that is a member of a consortium, then move to another and commit fraud again because there has been no established, legal method of sharing such information.”

Blockchain offers the ideal solution for these cases with smart contracts. As Alexandrov explains, “each booking is locked into a smart contract until the moment of check-out. This gives unparalleled security for the traveler compared to traditional bookings (where once they pay they have no guarantee that they will get the service which they paid for).”

Obstacles and solutions

However, GDS companies claim they offer more services and real-time pricing for distribution than blockchain ever could.

“There will always be a need for someone to aggregate offers and enable multi-sourced shopping. I don’t think blockchain resolves that,” Philip Likens, director of Sabre Labs, told Reuters. Representatives of Amadeus, Travelport and SITA echoed his comments.

Tony Hird, VP Enterprise Business Architecture at Travelport also pointed out another problem: “You can’t have a real-time environment if you have to wait 10 minutes for the transaction to be committed.”

The third problem is the nature of cryptocurrencies: it currently has a learning curve and requires some levels of technical understanding, which keeps it from mass adoption.

Recently, Michael Culhane, CEO of TripX LLC announced it has resolved the security, transaction speed, and compliance problems that have led large enterprises in the travel industry to hold off on the deployment of blockchain solutions. The platform, which is available on a “test” network, allows for a 10-minute registration process and the payoff of commissions being received same-day.

Without blockchain, the cost and complexity of deposits, invoicing, batch processes and reconciliation processes could stretch payment and commission settlements between 30 and 90 days. Culhane estimates that for most large enterprises, such savings could translate to a full percentage point on their EBITDA.

As for the “learning curve” problem, LockTrip is offering a model where users can pay with their credit card—the system will automatically purchase the necessary tokens on crypto exchanges. Users do not feel like they are using cryptocurrencies as everything is taken care of behind the scenes.

Predictions for 2019

The industry benefits greatly from blockchain adoption—but it also seems to be the path the customers are taking. According to predictions from Phocuswire, while Expedia and Booking.com are trying to be a one-stop shop for consumer travel purchases, consumers love to shop around. They like deals, they like to read reviews and they like to get recommendations from their friends. For these reasons, the path they take can involve hundreds of searches across a wide range of sites and apps. The trend will be moving away from centralized portals to find the best deals, and here is where blockchain can make a difference.

Forbes.com

Three Korean operators launch #5G networks

Operators bring forward South Korea 5G launch.

Three major mobile operators have simultaneously launched commercial 5G services in South Korea, making it the second country in the world – after the US – to have next-generation networks.

It had been thought that SK Telecom, Korea Telecom (KT) and LG Uplus would launch at the same time in March 2019 to coincide with the launch of the first compatible handsets.

However, it appears as though the global race to 5G has encouraged all three to bring the date forward. Services are currently limited to enterprise customers in parts of major cities but coverage is expected to expand to the rest of the country.

South Korea 5G

SK Telecom’s network covers a few cities including the main parts of the capital Seoul, with the first call made on the network by CEO Park Jung-Ho using a Samsung-manufactured smartphone prototype.

Meanwhile LG Uplus has installed 4,100 base stations – the most of any Korean operator -and plans to reach 7,000 by the end of the year. KT has coverage in Seoul and six other metropolitan areas – including the island of Jeju – and plans to reach 24 cities.

Verizon in the US launched the world’s first commercial 5G service in October this year, offering Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband to parts of the US, while more are expected to come online in 2019.

This includes in the UK where EE, Three and Vodafone have all confirmed at least some details of their 5G rollouts. In addition to enhanced mobile broadband and FWA broadband, 5G’s greater capacity and ultra-low latency is expected to power a range of new industrial applications.

Techradar.com

Is your #Android phone watching you? Study of more than 17,000 popular apps reveals 'disturbing practice'

Researchers who set out to investigate whether smartphones eavesdrop on consumers' conversations debunked one conspiracy theory and ended up finding another "disturbing practice."

Five researchers from Northeastern University in Boston, who specialize in computer science, studied more than 17,000 popular Android apps — nearly half of which were allowed access to a user's camera and microphone — over the past year. 

During their study, they did not find any apps, either on Google Play, App China, Mi.com or Anzhi, that turned on microphones and secretly recorded your conversations. They did, however, discover some may be "watching" your phone activity.

"We empirically studied the behavior these apps using a combination of static and dynamic analysis techniques," the researchers explained in an online statement.

The researchers used an automated system to test the functions and uses of each app using 10 different Android phones, according to Gizmodo. The system monitored whether these apps sent out any information to third parties — and found that they did. The study did not include Apple's iOS operating system. 

One of the phones tracked an app called GoPuff, a Seamless-like food delivery app, recording information and sending it to a site affiliated with software company Appsee.

"The research tested dozens of apps that use Appsee, and only one of them (GoPuff) did not disclose this fact to their users, and it appears that GoPuff were capturing zipcode information with Appsee. In this case it appears that Appsee's technology was misused by the customer and that our Terms of Service were violated," Appsee CEO Zahi Boussiba told Fox News on Thursday. “Once this issue was brought to our attention we've immediately disabled tracking capabilities for the mentioned app and purged all the relevant data from our servers."

Boussiba pointed to Appsee's Terms of Service policy, which states customers must disclose the use of any third party technology.

Google Play notes that all apps are required to "post a privacy policy that, together with any in-app disclosures, explain what user data your app collects and transmits, how it’s used, and the types of parties with whom it’s shared."

Google confirmed a part of Appsee's services may put some developers "at risk of violating Play policy,"and said they're still investigating issues recently uncovered by researchers.

"We always appreciate the research community's hard work to help improve online privacy and security practices," a Google spokesman said in a statement to Fox News on Thursday. "We're working closely with [Appsee] to help ensure developers appropriately communicate the SDK's functionality with their apps' end-users."

But that doesn't mean all apps follow the rules. Some apps are open about their ability to perform screen recordings, but they don't all inform a user when their screen is being taped nor do they explain they are sending the information to another party.

"Our study reveals several alarming privacy risks in the Android app ecosystem, including apps that over-provision their media permissions and apps that share image and video data with other parties in unexpected ways, without user knowledge or consent," the researchers said. "We also identify a previously unreported privacy risk that arises from third party libraries that record and upload screenshots and videos of the screen without informing the user. This can occur without needing any permissions from the user."

NU researchers Elleen Pan, Jingjing Ren, Martina Lindorfer, Christo Wilson and David Choffnes are planning to present their findings at the Privacy Enhancing Technology Symposium (PETS) in Barcelona in July.

Foxnews.com

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