[Grant Application] Travala Partnership - Integrate ICX payments to Travala.com & Marketing Campaign

[NorskKiwi]

Greetings ICON team,

I have been in discussions with Travala over the last month about integration of ICX payments to their network, and a subsequent marketing campaign. Today I am pleased to post this application on behalf of Travala.com.

1. Title

Travala Partnership - Integrate ICX payments to Travala.com & Marketing Campaign.

2. Project category:

• Infrastructure
• ICX Utility
• Network Growth

3. Project description

• As part of this integration, ICX will be added as a payment option on Travala.com. This integration will provide immense utility to the ICX token and its holders.
• Over 3 million travel products will become available to ICX holders with prices up to 40% cheaper than mainstream online travel agencies.
• ICX branding featured as a payment option in Travala’s homepage and mobile apps.
• Marketing of the partnership and integration via exclusive promos across all channels.
• Cashbacks with bookings.
• Joint team AMA’s with giveaways or travel credits.
• Secret sales promos for paying in ICX.
• Whitelabel version of Travela website that can be redone with ICON branding eg https://www.travala.com/binance,
• Stake for Credits: An option for ICONists to earn bonus travel credits whilst staking ICX.

4. Project Duration

Contract length of 3 years.

5. Milestones

Time from funding to delivery is so fast there is no need for technical milestones. After a budget is signed/agreed upon an announcent will be made about the partnership. Approximately 2 weeks later integration will be complete. At that point Travala will launch a kick off promotion.

6. Funding

Travala Requests

• Integration/management is costed at $50,000 USD. 0 USD requested, Travala offers to cover this expense themselves.
• ICX Marketing and Promotions on Travala - 100% of this ICX goes to users in givebacks, discounts, promos etc $50,000 USD.

Secondary Request

• Funding for the management of this Travala + ICON partnership. Resources will be used towards communications, marketing, and community growth - $ 25,000 USD. ICONation offers to commit $9000 USD towards this initiative, and asks that the ICON Foundation commit $16,000 USD.

7. Contact

I am working in conjunction with Ben Rogers, CMO at Travala.com. We have been coordinating documentation, marketing, technical integration etc.

8. Public Address’

Will be provided upon request.

I’m very excited about this partnership, it’s a huge use case for ICX. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for your consideration Icon Community!

James aka NorskKiwi

[ICON_ADMIN]

Hi NorskKiwi! Thank you for your detailed application. I’d like to ask you to learn more about Travala.

• This sounds like an exciting opportunity and thank you for the effort to create this partnership.
• First off, we’d recommend this partnership to be between Travala and ICONation, not ICON Foundation because we won’t be directly involved.
• This integration is comparable to other exchange or wallet integrations that we’ve supported in the past. For exchanges, we have never paid for integrations or listings. For wallets, a good comparison would be Fortmatic grant. However, Fortmatic was fully open sourced that benefits the ICON development community. There is no contract length.
• Can you clarify/confirm that the $50K integration is waived as shown on Page 9 (amount crossed out)? If not, as exciting as this opportunity is, this appears to be on the expensive side for integration work. Also, would it be possible to have examples of other projects paying for integrations and how it has benefited their community.
• Can you provide more details on the marketing budget breakdown? When comparing to other grants that are building full products on ICON’s network it seems that 50k budget spending on marketing Travala to ICX holders is very high, but we’ll keep an open mind as we request for more information.
• Can you please provide KPI of Travala.com? For example, DAU, revenue in various currencies (i.e. how much BNB is actually used to pay for travel things on this website?) and things like this.

[NorskKiwi]

Greetings BongAn, ICON staff, and ICON community.

We’re elated to hear that you are a fan of the idea! We have had an immense amount of positive feedback from the Icon community. We’re feeling a great sense of motivation and excitement to get this deal over the line.

ICONation will gladly manage this partnership. We will maintain oversight of marketing and budgetary expenses/plans and will be able to provide real time updates about the partnership.

• ICONation developers and communications staff will provide technical and information support. ICONation developers will assist the Travala development team with integration and future troubleshooting. ICONation communications team members will support and assist in launching marketing initiatives as well as providing QA support for ICX holders.

• Yes, I can confirm that the integration+maintenance costs listed on page 9 are waived. Travala quoted an expected cost of $50.000usd for this expense just so they could show their level of commitment to the partnership. Travala will cover that expense themselves.

• Re KPI’s: Travala is extremely transparent with their business. In October 2020 they had revenue of: $521,898, 75% of which was paid for with crypto. 16% of this was with their native AVA token, and the other 84% with other crypto currencies. Travala shares their monthly transparency reports directly on their website here: https://blog.travala.com/category/reports/

• Re Marketing Budget: Travala’s contract clause re marketing states: “Promote the utility of tokens as a preferred payment method at the Portal across all available marketing channels. Provide the Portal a marketing budget of US $50,000 in tokens to incentivise the usage of for travel booking payments via discounts and givebacks”. Practically Travala will be redistributing ALL the 50k USD worth of ICX to customers to boost the adoption and use of ICX and Travala.

I hope that answered your follow up questions. If there is any further areas you require more information about please don’t hesitate to ask.

Thanks team,

James aka NorskKiwi

[ICON_ADMIN]

Thank you for providing more information.

• We need more details on how exactly the $50,000 market budget will be used. Most partnerships appear to give up to 40% discounts. Is this marketing campaign going to be the same? If yes, how is that discount given to the customer?
• Unfortunately, we cannot provide funding for the management of this Travala + ICON partnership (secondary request). We don’t believe this should be covered by the grant program.

[NorskKiwi]

An example of the marketing activities they suggested we can do:

1. 5% or 10% cash back’s in ICX on travel taken within X period.
2. Joint AMA’s with givebacks in token or travel credits.
3. Whitelabel version of the Travala website site that can be redone with ICON branding eg https://www.travala.com/binance.
4. Secret sales when paying in a particular token.
5. Travala.com will create social media collateral with their branding and ICONs celebrating and marketing the partnership.
6. Travel coin videos celebrating a token as a payment method.
7. Stake for credits (a new one but a great one) if you have a platform where your holders stake to earn interest as an extra bonus we can add travel credits as a benefit.

The secondary grant application is to provide technical support, oversight, community help (Travala-ICX questions that will come), and marketing. If ICON does not accept the secondary request we do not have enough resources available to manage this partnership effectively.

This partnership/the concept is a slam dunk imho, it’s a great use case for our ICX token. However if ICON doesn’t want to fund a P-Rep to do this then I understand and respect that decision.

If that is the case then may ICON please take over this application and mange it. I really want to see this use case come to fruition. I will do everything possible to pass all relevant info to whomever took over. Naturally we will also be providing community support though our channels.

I travel so much in my life and being able to buy directly with ICX is something that I would love to do with my staking rewards.There are a lot of ICONists out there who also feel the same.

Thanks team,

James NorskKiwi

[ICON_ADMIN]

Hi, thank you for providing more information! Here are our questions:

• We need more details on how exactly the $50,000 market budget will be used. Most partnerships appear to give up to 40% discounts. Is this marketing campaign going to be the same? If yes, how is that discount given to the customer?
• Unfortunately, we cannot provide funding for the management of this Travala + ICON partnership (secondary request). We don’t believe this should be covered by the grant program.

[NorskKiwi]

Ok, thank you Bongan. Maybe this is an application that would be better suited to the upcoming CPS?

About the marketing budget: Travala requests the flexibility to decide where they use the ICX and what marketing resources they put it towards. They wish for a contact person to work with on an ongoing basis rather than commiting to a fixed plan on paper. This is why ICONation applied for a secondary grant to manage this in tandem with Travala, and additionally to be a contact person to keep the Icon Community updated.

[NorskKiwi]

For transparency’s sake:

If I hear no more from the Icon Foundation about this I will postpone the idea till the CPS launches.

If anyone else in our ecosystem has free time to manage this (and can help get marketing funding) please contact me. I’m absolutely swamped with Iconation + community management work atm.

[minhx]

Thanks. Unfortunately, it’s our internal policy where we cannot give grants to undetermined marketing initiatives. It doesn’t need to be 100% flushed out, but we need more than what is presented at the moment. I hope you understand.

[NorskKiwi]

Yeah absolutely. I am quite comfortable with the Foundation being practical and prudent with spending. Thanks for the reply.

[iconsweden]

Contract length of 3 years.

Why the contract is for 3 years? Is not this integration will be for forever? or if the implementation time is 3 years?