Thanks for the replies.

Our co-founder Oleg has been  committed to real estate industry since 2003, implementing software solutions and websites for a national property portal Realt.by and major market players. One of the main focuses for Oleg is internet marketing, and his strategies for optimizing experience of websites have been very successful with customers; notably, Realt.by is used by the absolute majority of the national real estate market.


"The real estate market is not rentals in any shape or form and despite the excellence in the RE sector, many companies have crashed an burned not understanding the minutiae of the business.
Urban areas (London, NY etc) have all seen a massive push back and Airbnb underestimated both the complexity and issues. Cities are more likely to see business rentals to overcome the 90 day issues and Airbnb is solidly in traditional rentals now where most pain is felt. Ideally you should have board members or advisors in the vacation rental sector. Only a small % of Airbnb income is from the shared market, most comes from the 365, full accommodation access and professionals."

There are 1446 short term rentals published on Realt.by, many of them pay for advertising and prime positions. Airbnb and Booking.com also work on that local market, but Realt.by platform is an effective competitor having a significant market share in real estate segment.


"Channel managers have 250K plus that are on Airbnb and this is the way that most volume inventory now hits the platforms. There is a lot of listing apathy especially as multiple systems need updating for extended marketing. Ideally your plan should have access to these and partners mentioned"

Airbnb will struggle with moving their operation to direct payments between guests and hosts in cryptocurrency. This will paralyse their business model and the established way of monetization. If they continue to charge various commissions and fees even after moving to the cryptocurrency, they will not get a competitive advantage from such migration. If they stop charging commissions and fees, they will lose income that is needed for operating a company with 3,100 employees. So it is unlikely that Airbnb will ever implement such change.[/i]

"Its a good point, by why would they unless its centralised.  3,100 employees is small, their marketing budget is huge and this is where partners and  aligned/named corporations can help you."

The introduction of cryptocurrency will allow REALT project to remove geographical barriers and provide services around the world.


"We all hope so, but I suspect you may need deeper insight to the rental world as its stands and inventory partners."

To be continued.
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A lot of companies are looking at the Airbnb sector and it gives an example of potential disruption on a major player in the marketplace using Blockchain. There are several others, Bee Token (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2213527.0) for example with some really smart ex Google and Uber members and VC interest, also with Airbnb in their sights.

My question is more related to this industry sector. Presumably REALT will build a look alike Airbnb platform and then try to engage the owners and more latterly the managers with big single channel inventory?

As an "investor" my concern would be a few fold, so interested to hear the replies:-

a) The founders have no real experience in this sector. Real estate is far removed from rentals and the complexities of marketing, pricing, management such as found in Airbnb and REALT will need to get into bed with PMS systems and channel managers and really understand the challenges at a granular level.
b) The industry right now at inventory level has no idea what Blockchain is or cryptocurrencies.  Presumably there is a significant proportion of funds allocated to marketing and messaging.  Looking at most OTA's results, the 15% fees sees a significant proportion on marketing (Google, TV, print, conferences etc.)
c) I didn't notice, but are the founders coins vested so the plan needs to succeed to warrant the ICO private gain?
d) Do you have any large corporate partners? I'm thinking WindingTree and its pre-ico and its Lufthansa partnership?
e) The rental industry has a "terror factor" of upsetting the OTA's (Airbnb, Expedia etc) and getting de-ranked. How will this be covered?
f) Would it not have been better to source a use case and test the water. Airbnb name makes noise and sees interest from those who do not understand the business in detail, but it needs a sizeable team, experienced individuals and really deep pockets.

All said however this disruption is needed.