By
Egor Pavlovich
December 12th, 2014
Sandman Hotel Group based in Vancouver, has started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for bookings.
Sandman Hotel Group in Canada is proud to announce they are now accepting bitcoin for room reservations.
Sandman points out that they are the first among Canadian hospitality companies to accept bitcoin. In total the company consists of 44 hotels that are spread across Canada, the group says the visitors will be able to make bitcoin reservations in all of them.
Salim Kassam, Vice President of Marketing for Sandman Hotel Group, specified that that TED talk summit was held in Vancouver earlier this year, that attracted a tech-savvy group of travelers.
“Our hotels has a number of enquiries regarding payment through alternative payments including bitcoin. As a customer-focused company with an eye on technology, we decided to incorporate this emerging technology as a payment option,” said Salim Kassam.
Mr. Kassam mentioned that Sandman is eliminating price volatility risks, by choosing to convert all bitcoin payments to Canadian dollars instantly. To make this idea real, the hotel group will be partnering with one of the current leading providers of bitcoin wallets and payment services.
To pay in cryptocurrency the customer simply needs to select bitcoin as a payment option, receives an invoice and transfers the bicoins to Sandman’s account on Coinbase. The confirmation gets confirmed at the same time as a reservation confirmation is received.
“We feel that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies may be here to stay. We can tell you without question that more and more of our customers are seeking to pay with this currency, and our job is to be accommodating to the changing needs and requests of our guests,” said Mr. Kassam.
Even though Sandman claims to be the first hospitality company in Canada to accept bitcoin, there are already a few ways the users can spend their bitcoin in hospitality industry.
Expedia, recently announced that it considers an idea of accepting bitcoin for hotel reservations. The company said that bitcoin would be next to other payment options such as credit/debit cards and PayPal.
Moreover, in February this year, a travel agency CheapAir said it is allowing its users to book hotels with bitcoins. Additionally the company says the customers can make reservations at more than 200,000 different hotels using its service.
