Blockchain technology is rapidly developing and actively penetrating into the business industry around the world. By now, it has been tested in such spheres as finance, logistics, and the energy sector. However, blockchain technology has also been used in the field of tourism more recently. So, how is the new and, perhaps, the most popular technology can be useful in the tourism industry now?
Booking and buying air-tickets: loyalty programs
According to many experts, loyalty programs are not used by consumers in full now. Moreover, they are even disappointed in them. Of course, this does not mean that companies should abandon incentive and motivation systems – on the contrary, marketers need to reaffirm the values of their customers and revise the programs, in accordance with the result. Blockchain technology can be used as a loyal assistant, which will greatly simplify the process for all interested parties. This happens as follows. After buying tickets, the tourist is accrued with virtual points, and blockchain transform them into virtual currency, which can be used by all participants of this loyalty network. In other words, the tourist books tickets on the site of an airline. Having performed this operation, tourist receives loyalty points – crypto currency tokens. They can be spent at all participating companies of blockchain network, where the company is placed. Thus, it becomes possible to interact with several loyalty programs.
Customer identification: fast and easy
Probably, the identification process at airports will be named complex and tedious by many tourists. Waiting in line, identification with a whole set of travel documents – passport, visa, boarding pass, etc. – repeatedly. This is also a problem for airports, because every year the amount of air passengers is getting bigger. If we apply blockchain technology, which undoubtedly will be approved by many companies soon, the identification process will become much easier. The passenger needs only to register his passport and upload his selfie to the special application for the ID card and come to the check-in place for the flight. The machine only checks all the data and photo – and the passenger is registered. Further, he does not need to present all documents: to pass immigration control or, for example, he can register luggage by opening the application in his smartphone. As you can see, the procedure is simplified for both, passengers who do not like to wait, and for the airport personnel whose main task is to serve the entire customers’ flow at the highest possible quality.
Travel gamification
Usually tourists, especially beginners, do not notice many interesting places that are worth visiting, or even simply do not know where to go and what to see. This business concept is designed to eliminate this significant drawback. Using the best loyalty programs, behavioral economics and game mechanics, it can quite help to interest and retain the client.
This version of the use of blockchain technology in the sphere of tourism is currently being developed by DeskBell Chain – a project is based on blockchain platform within the service for the hotel business DeskBell. The developers intend to link hotels, their guests, as well as local businesses, especially, the nearest to the hotel institutions into the whole ecosystem. Its participants will not only be aware of everything that happens at the location of their hotel, but they will also be able to distribute and exchange services, offers and events and get DBT tokens for this as a motivating reward. Tokens holders, in their turn, will be able to receive DeskBell services and participate in the ecosystem of mutual exchange, and implement tokens directly to the hotels and travel businesses in DeskBell. In addition, there are obvious benefits for representatives of the tourism business. Firstly, the DeskBell Chain blockchain platform will facilitate the automation of interaction with customers and increase the average check. Secondly, it is an opportunity to reduce advertising costs and motivate partners to share services. Finally, it is personal offers to different groups of users and socialization through motivated feedback.
Now, these are just some possible and most popular variants of blockchain technology usage in the world of tourism. It is worth paying attention to the representatives of this sphere. It is possible that projects based on blockchain technology will be even more increasingly necessary and will make a real revolution in the field of world tourism in the nearest future.