Blockchain & Hotel Industry: A Game-Changer?

Just like the internet has been adopted in all industries, blockchain is also making an impact in the corporate world, despite being in its early stages. It is improving the current infrastructure by providing a simple interface backed by secure and trustable distributed ledger technology.

The hotel industry is one of the industries that is slowly adopting blockchain-based solutions to enhance its user experience. After facing a few stagnant years due to the pandemic, the industry has sped up its growth through blockchain service integration.

Most user and customer data storage solutions running on multi-chain verifications with a centralized system are time-consuming and challenging to categorize to provide benefits to hotel customers.

Thus, blockchain incorporation enables an automation process that is kickstarted as soon as the commands are instructed. This enables the hotel industry to provide personalized experiences for every customer.

Potential of Blockchain in the Hotel Industry

The advancement of technologies creates more opportunities and potential growth areas for businesses. Currently, peer-to-peer interfaces and blockchain technology have brought about a few advantages that enhance the hotel industry's experience and bring them closer to the customers:

• Facilitating secure payment models using cryptocurrencies between industry participants. International travelers benefit greatly as cross-border payments through fiat are costlier with international transfer fees.
• Enabling pre-booking systems. Once the payments have been processed, the rooms or suits are reserved immediately through the smart contract, which lowers human errors like double booking.
• Enabling hotels to verify if the booking and check-in details are right and the process is automated.
• Making food accommodations through premium quality suppliers, as blockchain tracks back the food supply chain to its harvester.
• Providing automated verification processes and baggage tracking for the hospitality enterprise, which tracks them in real-time.
• Eliminating several identity verification processes in the current systems as the decentralized ledger enables access and verification in a single click. 
• Enabling hotels to use accessible data to provide a customized living experience until the customer checks out. The customers can also access real-time data like ratings and reviews of the restaurants in an instant.
• Fostering collaborative loyalty programs that increase the possible number of onboarding customers within the afflicted enterprises. The structure migrates each of its customers while also providing necessary discounts and additional benefits to the customers.
• Enabling the sectors to try out different models like Token Money Hotels through cryptocurrency payments.
• Enabling the bookings to be made directly on the hotel websites and bringing down the price by eliminating third-party costs.
• Safeguarding customer data via encoding through a secure decentralized network from the point of booking to prevent data breaches.

Blockchain Use Cases that Aid in Hospitality

As the industry has been growing since 2015, numerous blockchain use cases have been developed in the hospitality and hotel industry.

Several blockchain-based solutions brands have developed in line with enhancing decentralized solutions for the industry and customers.

Winding Tree

The Ethereum-based platform is a travel marketplace that helps travelers across the country to the point of the hotel.

The Winding Tree lowers the price for all parties involved by eliminating third-party costs. The marketplace can be accessed by holding their Lif tokens.

Several airlines and hotel chains like Lufthansa and Nordic Choice have partnered with the brand to manage the inventory shipment on smart contracts.

Bee Token

The Beenest is a decentralized version of Airbnb. It connects the host with the customers and lets customers make room bookings across major cities around the world at 0% commission. The decentralized home-sharing protocol can be used by holding their Bee tokens. 

Hotel Revenue Management

As the market pushes the hotel industry to adopt new technologies, it also brings in new and widened opportunities for the sectors to generate revenues.

With the customized marketing strategy and quick processes the industry achieves through blockchain, the customer experience is also enhanced. This encourages the management to develop engaging revenue models that also benefit the customers.

Enhancing Direct Bookings

The management introduces a blockchain-backed peer-to-peer system to improve direct bookings through the hotel website.

The real-time prices are applied, which are ultimately lower than booking through third-party applications.

Decentralization eliminates the centralized, middle-man structure, allowing individuals and businesses to experience managed cash and cryptocurrency outflow.

Interoperable Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs that once generated a chunk of consumers and retained them have become over-saturated over the years.

However, blockchain has given a newfound opportunity to loyalty programs that provide both long- and short-term value through collaborations.

Instead of hosting single brand loyalty programs, blockchain lets businesses partner with other corresponding industries.

The hotel industries are collaborating with airlines and travel industries to bring a multi-chain loyalty program that lets them migrate their customers while providing them with loyalty perks. This system has made loyalty programs more interoperable and enables to development of a larger revenue structure.

Conclusion

As the hospitality industry attempts to turn towards a decentralized environment, a lot of opportunities arise for customers to benefit along the way.

Blockchain and distributed ledger technology will challenge the current models, so to be relevant in the future, introducing a blockchain or DAG-backed security model are essential.