Crypto-based online travel ticketing service Travala partnered with Solana blockchain to enable travellers to book hotels and flights using Solana tokens along with some major stablecoins.

On Sept. 21, Travala CEO Juan Otero announced an integration with the Solana ecosystem, during a panel discussion at the Solana Breakpoint conference in Singapore.

The integration enables the online ticketing service customers to book and pay for flights and accommodations using stablecoins like USDC and USDT on Solana rails as well as Solana’s native token – SOL.

Travala was initially created as a crypto-friendly booking service. It already supports major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum as well as over one hundred different altcoins. At the same time, only a handful of cryptocurrencies are natively supported within the platform’s user account wallets. All the other available payment options leverage third-party digital and crypto wallets.

With the addition of Solana-enabled transactions, the platform clients can enjoy more versatile payment options and all the benefits of this blockchain’s fast and cheap execution of smart contracts. Moreover, the Solana integration significantly reduces the cost of travel, allowing Travala users to deposit and withdraw supported tokens directly on Travala accounts, with zero-fee transactions on travel bookings.

The travel service also plans to introduce SOL travel rewards in the near future. Users will be able to receive up to 10% of their bookings’ value back in SOL travel rewards through the Travala loyalty program.

In addition, Travala’s native token, AVA, will also be deployed on Solana in addition to its existing Ethereum and BNB Chain versions.

Solana is one of the most used blockchains for stablecoin transfers. It is approximately 46 times faster than Ethereum and more than five times faster than Polygon, the leading Ethereum scaling solution. One of the blockchain’s latest additions is the availability of Paypal’s PYUSD stablecoin.