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Have you ever spent hours, upon hours, trying to research you’re next travel destination? I know I sure have and still do! In fact, I’m in the middle of planning my next vacation right now to Portland, Oregon. The problem I always seem to face though is trying to figure out, what is the best way to plan a vacation? There are just so many options, and choices to make!
The Problem with Travel Reviews
What places should we visit? Where should we stay? We will being spending 7 days in Oregon and want to get a good feel for life in Oregon. As our plan is to ultimately move there following the completion of my residency this coming year. Now normally, I start off my research like most others, by simply googling “Best places to visit in Oregon.” The problem is that the majority of websites that pop up are tourist-targeted websites that are advertising some resort or vacation packages. While this may be great for some it’s just not what I’m looking for, especially since a lot of the reviews are biased or misleading.
Another option I thought about was to book the vacation through a travel agent as this would surely save me the time and hassle of doing all the research myself. However, travel agents are expensive and I found myself being offered similar vacation packages that I found online while doing my own research. It seemed as though the travel agents were more interested in the benefits they were receiving from the referrals then my own travel experience.
I found myself wishing, if only I already knew someone who lived in Oregon. Someone I could just quickly message and ask for some local recommendations. This way I could ensure I wasn’t just wasting my time or even worse chose a destination only to have a bad experience during our vacation. That’s when I discovered Cool Cousin!
Cool Cousin: The Solution to all of your Travel Questions
Cool Cousin is about the closest thing one could ask for next to having a friend in every city you’ve ever wanted to visit. “Cool Cousin directly connects travelers with locals who share your interests – aka Cousins – and provides a map of their favorite city spots.” Apart from finding great local recommendations, the part I found most helpful was the fact that I could get personalized answers to all my travel questions by connecting with like-minded locals “cousins.”
Cool Cousin is a “decentralized ecosystem that uses smart contracts to guarantee the direct and secure exchange of knowledge and services between travelers and locals around the world.”
Signing up and logging in was simple, free, and can be done in seconds by connecting your Facebook account. The site and app are both very user friendly and easy to navigate. I was also excited to find several local cousins in Portland, Oregon!
Two things my fiancée and I wanted to make sure we did while visiting Oregon was to explore a great hiking trail with some beautiful scenery as well as visit a local brewery after our hike. I found a Cousin named Rachel who provided some great recommendations for both! This was win-win because not only did I get great recommendations for my up-coming trip but cousins are also rewarded for answering questions with CUZ tokens.
Benefits of Using Cool Cousin & How to Earn CUZ tokens
There are several ways to earn CUZ tokens by using Cool Cousin.
- Users – “Users can earn CUZ tokens for different levels of engagement and can become contributors.”
- Contributors – “ Contributors can earn CUZ tokens for actions that add value to the platform such as thanking their Cousins and signing into a spot, to contributing to the growth of the community by taking photographs for spots, flagging inaccuracies, and more.”
- Cousins – “Cousins earn CUZ tokens for answering travelers’ questions, promoting Cool Cousin, creating content, answering user questions, and more.”
- Editors – “ Users who have made enough content contributions and have been accepted by the Community, can earn the status of Editor and earn CUZ tokens for validating Contributors’ content corrections.”
With so many different ways to earn CUZ token no matter whether you’re a user, cousin, or contributor, it’s easy to see how this will promote and encourage engagement within the Cool Cousin Community. I know after spending quite some time exploring the Cool Cousin Community that I will definitely become a Cool Cousin member in my area and hopefully become a Cousin.
So whether you’re a traveler like myself looking to save time and money on an upcoming trip or looking to become a cousin who can monetize your city knowledge and provide travelers with some great local recommendations. I highly recommend you take the time to check out Cool Cousin.