Bakkt announces Chain Hotels Partnership for rewards program
Bakkt, the digital asset marketplace, has announced the launch of a partnership with Choice Hotels International to help expand the hotel chain’s rewards and loyalty program and combine it with crypto.
One of the very first applications of blockchain and crypto tokens was thought to be in the loyalty program industry as it was believed that the crypto tokens would be best suited for the same. The conversion of the loyalty points into crypto tokens would make it transparent, re-usable, and transferable as well, something which cannot be done with the loyalty points right now in most industries, which leads to a huge wastage of such loyalty points. But this never took off as crypto tokens were not very popular and so most users were not familiar with them at that time. But now, the awareness around crypto tokens has increased, it has started getting regulated in few countries and so the race to convert the loyalty program into crypto has begun.
“By working with Choice Hotels, Bakkt is bringing tremendous value to its millions of customers by unlocking new redemption opportunities for Choice Privileges members to enjoy their rewards points in day-to-day life or even to purchase bitcoin,” said Bakkt Chief Revenue Officer Sheela Zemlin
This partnership allows the loyalty points holders of the hotel chain to convert their points into cash and use this cash to buy bitcoin or send it to a friend or anyone else for that matter, or they can use it for payments through Apple Store or Google Pay. Till November 5, the users would be able to earn an additional 500 points for linked their Choice Privileges Account with the Bakkt app and 1000 points for redeeming their points for cash. The hotel chain has over 7,100 hotels in over 40 countries providing huge coverage for this loyalty points program.
Just last week, Bakkt had announced that it would be merging with the SPAC VPC Impact Acquisitions Holdings (VIH) as part of its effort to go public in the coming months. It continues with its growth and expansion in the meantime and the public listing is likely to help it to raise funds for further growth. With all efforts being made by the crypto industry to go mainstream, this might be a good time to launch several such crypto token-based loyalty programs to move the crypto closer to the general public.
