Tech

Sandman Hotel Group starts accepting Bitcoin for reservations

by Stephen Hui on July 16th, 2014 at 2:27 PM
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      If you're booking a room at the Sandman Hotel Vancouver City Centre, you no longer have to use your credit card.

      The Vancouver-based Sandman Hotel Group, which has 44 hotels in Canada and the U.K., is now accepting Bitcoin for room reservations.

      That makes it the first Canadian hospitality company to take the digital currency, according to a news release issued today (July 16).

      “Vancouver hosted the TED talk summit earlier this year. This event brought a diverse and tech savvy group of travellers and presenters to the city. Our hotels had a number of enquiries regarding payment through alternative payments including bitcoin. As a customer focused company with an eye on technology, we decided to incorporate this emerging technology as a payment option,” Salim Kassam, vice president of marketing for Sandman, said in the release.

      “There is a great deal of concern regarding the fluctuation in values of bitcoin. This can be seen to a certain extent in any traditional currency. Bitcoin has seen larger fluctuations; however, we mitigate this by taking an instantaneous exchange value and converting them to Canadian dollars."

      Prospective hotel guests can select Bitcoin as a payment method on the Sandman website. Guests are sent an e-invoice, which tells them how they can transfer funds to Sandman's Bitcoin wallet. Reservations are confirmed once Sandman receives the money.

      Sandman is using Coinbase as its Bitcoin payment processor.

      “We feel that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies may be here to stay. We can tell you without question that more and more of our customers are seeking to pay with this currency, and our job as hoteliers is to be accommodating to the changing needs and requests of our guests,” Kassam said.

      Sandman is owned by Northland Properties Corporation and has hotels under the brands Sandman Inns, Sandman Hotel & Suites, and Sandman Signature Hotels & Resorts. The company's local hotels join the growing number of businesses in Vancouver that are accepting Bitcoin.

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