Bitcoin-compatible hotel booking engine launched

Revpar Guru has partnered with Bitpay, a business solutions provider for bitcoin currency to offer Guestleader, the world’s first bitcoin-compatible hotel booking engine.

Now, hotels of any size - from small, boutique properties to large, international hotel chains - can accept bitcoins quickly and easily as a form a payment via the booking engine on their own website.

When booking a stay with a hotel that uses the Guestleader booking engine on their website, guests will have the option to select bitcoins as their preferred method of payment.

Bitpay processes all transactions; the company receives the bitcoins from the guest, and alerts the hotel that a booking has been made and paid for.

Bitpay will then send payment to the hotel on the next business day in the hotel's currency of choice out of a possible list of 10 currencies.

Since bitcoins are a borderless, digital currency, hotels are facilitated in targeting customers in emerging markets without paying the transaction fees that many banks charge for international transactions.

Also, hotels receive their funds in one business day, as opposed to transactions handled through the bank, as many banks hold international funds for up to two weeks.

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system introduced as open source software in 2009 by developer Satoshi Nakamoto.

The digital currency created and used in the system is also called bitcoin and is alternatively referred to as a virtual currency, electronic money, or cryptocurrency.

The bitcoin system is not controlled by a single entity, like a central bank, which has led the US Treasury to call bitcoin a decentralised currency.

Because bitcoins can be transferred directly from one person to another they are sometimes described as "digital cash".