Kevin Nyango
TechInPacific – Compared to other innovative technologies, blockchain technology offers more benefits for the tourism industry. It helps tourism marketing by providing stores data on decentralization node and builds trust for customers. Additionally, it also provides currencies trading exchange that the industry need. In short, the innovative technology has a big potential to take part in the tourism medical insurance sector while it also helps much on sales and marketing.
Blockchain technology has been widely adopted in the bank and financial services while in the tourism technology it is used to secure and handle data in an advanced and better way.
DeskBell Chain, a blockchain-technology solution emerges to handle legal information in the tourism sector. This technology is somewhat useful to be implemented in hotels as it provides legal guarantees while working with an online travel agent in order to protect each other’s interests.
I provide one scenario regarding this; Giluwe Hotel enters an agreement with Wanol Travels, an online travel agent. It is said in the agreement that the online travel agent will get a higher commission if there are customers reserved room nights more than five days in advance for the next six months. Through the current method, both parts would sign a contract and when the contract ends, both would have to make a report to calculate the total number of online bookings from Wanol Travels. Otherwise, they would just use commission consolidation service to have it documented for them.
It may take much more time and effort to calculate all the numbers and commission. However, with a help from a legal lawyer as the middleman, the correct commission is obtained. Seeing from the example, we can see how the process is quite cost and time-consuming.
DeskBell Chain is there to help these processes less time and cost-consuming by providing many benefits including the removal of middleman’s service, resulting in cost-reduction and storing documents encrypted on a shared ledger that leads to cost-savings. Moreover, with DeskBell Chain technology, small medium tourism businesses (SMEs) are able to connect with the tourists and guests from all of their point of service.
The blockchain system uses geo-location technology to assist the SMEs in remote areas. It provides digital content creation, publishing, and distribution that gives them an opportunity to enter the bigger global tourism marketplace.
Many types of research found that tourism has an important role in driving a country’s economy with the account for 10% of global GDP. According to Google Stat, at least 74% of leisure travels and 77% of business travels are now already planned on the internet. Judging from the data, it is predicted that in the future, all travel and tourism businesses will go online.
It is a big challenge for the tourism SMEs to succeed in bringing their presence online. Since it is very competitive, these SMEs should offer better services in order not to lose clients and lost in the business including providing convenient and secure payment service and make a proper approach to its clients.
DeskBell project brings simplicity and security to both clients and suppliers by providing and facilitating online payment for both booking and purchasing services and products. As in tourism, blockchain technology helps to prevent global travel scammers and brings a direct benefit to both local communities as well as the country for the economic prosperity.
The countries that use blockchain technology
- UAE àDubai establishes a blockchain-based tourism platform that soon will be launched in 2020.
- Malta àBitcoin Adventures, a travel agent that accepts Bitcoin as the payment method
- Russia à Russian Tourism Official uses blockchain technology as it is expected to bring a big change in the tourism industry for 5-10 years later.
- Taiwan àTaiwan Airlines accepts Bitcoin as the payment method as it is promising for the future of tourism. In 2017, Taiwan Central Bank supported the regulation of cryptocurrency.
- Latvia àIn 2014, Latvia’s AirBaltic was the first airline to accept Bitcoin. The number of airlines that accept cryptocurrency keeps increasing ever since.
- Germany àGermany Tourism Board also accepts Bitcoin
- Papua New Guinea àPNG Government creates digital and financial inclusion to be applied in its tourism industry for its mass rural population. According to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, at least 14% of 50,000 SMEs are in the tourism sector.
We can see now that many business owners, airlines, hotels, tourists/guests, governments and many people in the society have experienced the benefits of the blockchain technology. The technology reduces the risk of being scammed, fraudulent, and counterfeit. It provides a direct peer-to-peer business transaction that preventing all of these insecurities to happen.
The technology moreover will build trust and confidence between the customers and suppliers in the tourism sector. In other words, the technology supports the SEMs to grow bigger in the business sector, thus giving a significant contribution to the GDP of a country’s economy
