Blockchain for hotels and traveling?
We’ve all opened a newspaper or clicked on an article in the last 3 months, chances are you’ve heard of blockchain. Blockchain technology has witnessed an explosion of interest and investment recently, many people commonly associate it with Bitcoin (a cryptocurrency which uses a blockchain as its ledger.)
Years ago for one to get a taxi driver, they’d have to search for one first or notify them in advance for them to get their service. But today Taxis that take more than 10 minutes to arrive are considered late. What happened? Uber, Taxify and Little, they came up with a solution that shows transparency, with easy access, and trust to the services needed.
Is future of venue booking here?
The blockchain buzz is also in the traveling industry, some of the big companies in the market such as Lufthansa and Nordic Choice hotels are experimenting with blockchain distribution — Leaving us with unanswered questions, is blockchain the savior of online traveling?
Its seems not okay to talk about blockchain technology and how it will affect hotels yet its still a new thing to many and some don’t yet understand it fully. Going slightly back to basics.
Blockchain in a nutshell
Blockchain is an ever-growing list of records called ‘blocks’ — What’s being recorded are transactions. One ‘block’, for example, might contain the record of person A transferring $500 to person B. Importantly, blockchain technology is naturally resistant to changes of transaction records after the fact.
“An open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.” — Harvard business review
The blockchain technology can be considered as a single source of truth by cutting off all the intermediaries and linking two parties with this being on the ledger forever. The other important thing to know about blockchain is that they are based on decentralised consensus. Transactions are recorded across multiple computers, so there is no way to alter records without the collusion of the entire network.
Three reasons why we think blockchain should be something that hoteliers look out for:
- It has the potential to vastly reduce the market share of online companies whose websites allow consumers to book various travel related services directly via Internet and intermediaries.
- It could make it a lot easier (and cheaper) for hoteliers to introduce new technology to their operations.
- It may be a possible solution to unpredictable wholesale rates offered to hoteliers.
I think that blockchain is a ground breaking technology but its still in a bubble right now, more and more people are getting to get the hitch of it and in the near future things will be very different from how they have been in a long run.
