At the beginning of 2018, the blockchain craze started in the financial world. By sorting out the application scenarios of blockchain and related tourism entrepreneurial projects, the New Tourism Research Institute found that blockchain is still in the early stages of incremental development at the industrial application level, with mostly conceptual projects.
From the perspective of the industrial chain, the practical application role of blockchain belongs to the midstream channel and distribution category. Focus on solving the channel problem between the resource side and the C side. Currently, there are many startup companies in the three major fields of finance, aviation (air tickets), and hotels. .
European travel agency giant TUI Group also announced its investment in blockchain in July 2017, becoming the first company in the tourism industry to try to apply blockchain technology. TUI said it would consider moving all data to a private version of Ethereum. The middlemen such as booking and space booking are removed from the market.
At this stage, blockchain has been given the aura of a “disruptor”. Promoting a new round of development of the tourism industry through blockchain technology has become a topic of concern to the industry.
In fact, due to the long industrial chain of the tourism industry, many intermediate links are involved in the transaction process. After more than 10 years of development, the pattern of midstream channels is relatively stable, making the actual application scenarios of blockchain relatively limited. However, it is certain that its application in payment and clearing may save relevant tourism companies a lot of money every year. cost. So what are the current types of blockchain technology applications? What challenges and development opportunities will it face?
Main application types at present
1.Consumption points management
The City of New York in the United States is developing the "Dubai Point" (Dubai) project for Norway and Dubai. This project uses blockchain as the underlying technology and adopts a gamified tour method to help tourists discover new attractions and guide tourists to visit routes. Dubai will encourage tourists to choose attractions according to their own preferences through points travel, and dynamically collect points for redemption based on ratings.
2. Reservation management
(1) Inventory management: Tree is a B2B travel inventory trading platform that applies blockchain, including air tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals, destination tours and activities and other products.
Tree is the only open source public chain in the tourism industry so far. It is built on a public blockchain and has its own currency. It is a mature crypto-economic project. It aims to eliminate rent-seeking middlemen from the distribution system by creating a platform that allows suppliers to regain control of their inventory and display it virtually for free.
(2) Air ticket booking: Russia’s Siberian Airlines (S7) and Alfa-Bank cooperate to sell air tickets on the blockchain. One of the main advantages of using this technology is speeding up the payment process.
In December 2016, S7 and Alfa Bank conducted the first letter of credit payment service using Ethereum smart contracts. Aeroflot, one of Russia’s largest airlines, has also publicly stated that it is proposing to introduce digital assets and related technologies into the company’s operational processes.
(3) Travel agencies: British social platform Cool launched an open source encryption token called CUZ based on the Ethereum platform for exchanging travel services and unique local information.
CUZ is a decentralized ecosystem that uses smart contracts to ensure a direct and secure exchange of knowledge and services between travelers and locals around the world. Cool's mission is to revolutionize the travel business in every city on the planet by connecting travelers with like-minded locals to exchange personalized information and personalized services in an unintermediary way.
As a domestic decentralized travel service booking platform, it directly links global travel service providers (enterprises or individuals) and consumers through the blockchain network, taking travel accommodation booking as the entry point to build zero-level travel based on trust, incentives and incentives. Serve. The future tourism service commission ecology.
3. Hotel and airline loyalty programs
Singapore Airlines (SIA) announced in 2018 that it would launch a blockchain-based customer loyalty program for passengers. Singapore Airlines will launch a mobile digital wallet app within six months this year where users can purchase Singapore Airlines tickets.
In addition, the blockchain-based application will allow members to use miles to participate in retailer point-of-sale transactions, develop retail partnerships, and provide users with more ways to spend points, thereby increasing customer incentives and loyalty.
4. Track pilot professional certifications and qualifications
French Airbus, a participant in the blockchain alliance, is also exploring the possibility of blockchain applications. The test project is using blockchain to track pilots’ professional certificates and qualifications.
5. Credit consumption management
We are studying how to use blockchain technology to verify the credibility and identity of landlords and users. Credibility is extremely important on a platform. In the future, users will be able to rent specific types of houses only if their credibility reaches a certain level. The purpose of using blockchain technology is to better establish a reputation platform for merchants and travelers and effectively store identity information.
The founder of Chain in New Zealand is leading the team to build the BTA ( ) system, using the underlying blockchain technology and Internet applications to create a new tourism data trading platform, gradually replacing the traditional OTA system. Based on the concept of open source sharing, the Chain system uses blockchain technology to establish an efficient, transparent, and credible global database to create a borderless tourism credit consumption sharing ecological community.
6. Digital identity management
In Estonia, blockchain technology has been used to develop electronic identity projects. It is reported that allowing non-Estonian residents to apply to become e-citizens of the country will enable these residents to enjoy a range of services provided by the country. Currently, Estonia uses the program to encourage talent from around the world to start businesses in the country.
7. Travel community reviews
Yuelu Chain is a decentralized travel community review platform based on blockchain. It is committed to building a blockchain and is also the world's first blockchain to serve the physical tourism economy. Peer-to-peer network technology based on blockchain and smart contracts allows each individual user or organization to participate in the construction process of the shared ecology, thus forming a peer-to-peer "decentralized" ecosystem.
8. Travel
Chain uses advanced blockchain, big data and artificial intelligence technologies to create an industry-leading travel sharing platform. Not only can it establish a more fair and transparent travel system, but it can also provide new impetus for the shared travel ecology. In the travel chain ecosystem, various participants can share a new world of point-to-point decentralized travel.
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Challenges facing travel blockchain
Based on the theory of blockchain decentralization, direct connections between tourism suppliers and downstream tourists can be achieved. However, the bigger problem is that blockchain, as an innovative technology, has certain technical and cost thresholds, and not all travel product providers can afford their technology.
At this stage, due to cost and technology limitations, only a few hotels, scenic spots, and tourism product providers have the opportunity to establish their own blockchain sales channel systems, which greatly limits the dissemination of product information to tourists. channel.
As for low-cost blockchain channels, they are even rarer. Looking at the current tourism market, traditional channels are very mature in technology and application, and the market oligopoly power is prominent.
Judging from the history of computer technology development, blockchain based on decentralization cannot surpass centralization in terms of processing efficiency. At the same time, some decentralized blockchain tourism platforms have the problem that platform operators have weak control over the platform, making it difficult to negotiate with suppliers on behalf of the platform.
At present, it is difficult for blockchain to subvert or impact intermediaries such as online travel platforms and travel agencies, and it will take a long time for it to be implemented.
1. Security level
One of the core features of blockchain is that it cannot be tampered with. If the records in the blockchain are incorrect or there are loopholes in the original protocol, subsequent problems will be difficult to solve. When all data blocks are connected through nodes, once a problem occurs, there is no so-called "superior".
One thing that is difficult to control with travel blockchain is the accuracy and authenticity of information. When the amount of information is large, how to mine effective and accurate information from noisy information requires big data mining, processing, cleaning, etc. There is a lot of technical support, which affects the timeliness of the application field. Another important point is how to ensure the security of information, that is, it is difficult for relevant travel users to judge whether the information itself is valuable, true or false.
2. Legal supervision level
At present, many people in the blockchain market are not using technology to solve practical problems, but are instead raising funds to make money and hype valuations. In particular, most of the so-called ICOs that are currently being hyped are innovations in fundraising tools and have nothing to do with technological innovation. In this regard, we must be careful to prevent the occurrence of "bad money driving out good money", which will cause tourism organizations that really want to do business to withdraw from the market and affect the application of blockchain technology in the tourism industry. For the healthy development of the blockchain industry, the government must increase efforts to introduce relevant laws, scientifically supervise, and accelerate blockchain compliance.
Development opportunities
The "2017 China Tourism Development Forum" proposed the concept of Chinese tourism chains for the first time. China Tourism Chain is based on blockchain technology and gives full play to its advantages of multi-party participation, openness and transparency, consensus trust, traceability, non-tampering, and privacy protection. Build an on-chain tourism ecology, combine different application scenarios of different tourism participants, provide standardized, intelligent, and big data support services, and provide support departments for real-time monitoring, daily management, and key decision-making of tourism management; realize efficient management of tourism service providers, Business improvements such as intelligent services and precision marketing bring convenient, efficient, credible and preferential travel experiences to travel consumers.
Based on the important characteristics of blockchain, future applications in the tourism industry will mainly focus on decentralization and security trust. For tourists, the application of blockchain technology enables "zero-distance contact" between tourists and service providers, thereby eliminating dependence on middlemen and greatly improving their service quality.
In addition, blockchain can provide good solutions in building travel trust communities, purchasing travel insurance, identity proofs, travel reviews, hotel and flight bookings, etc. In the future, as blockchain technology matures, it will be increasingly used in the tourism industry, which will empower the transformation and upgrading of China's cultural tourism industry.
Chapter 252
标签： #Blockchain #Scenario Application #Travel
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