The hype regarding blockchain technology in the hospitality industry started around 2017-2018. Companies and use cases come and go, and although still in its infancy, there are promising projects that are providing use cases with this technology. Here’s a summary of the current projects that have stayed and the latest projects utilizing blockchain technology in the hospitality (mainly hotel) industry:
Pinktada: Pinktada already has a selection of hotels joining the platform with locations from Brooklyn to Miami to Bahamas to Cancun. In a nutshell, it tokenizes hotel bookings. Hotel bookings are defined as Room Night Tokens (RNT) which can then be swapped for different bookings or sold back for the platform’s digital currency – PinkCash, up to do days before check-in. This distinction is important as it allows the end user say that has booked 7 nights in a hotel to potentially change plans and spend 5 nights there and sell the last two nights, as each night is individually represented as a token, instead of the full booking. The tokens themselves correspondingly can fluctuate in price with supply and demand dynamics. They have 3 main functions: Sellback booking, which is selling some or all of your booking’s RNTs based on current market value in exchange for PinkCash, which can be used for any future purchases on Pinktada. The second is Swap booking, whereby the customer can swap for different dates, hotel, or destination and then pay or receive the difference between your swap credit (based on current market value) and the new booking. Thirdly, the platform also has additional feature which provides 3D tour of the hotels, its rooms and amenities.
Locktrip, Webjet and the Hydrachain: In Q2 Webjet (world's second largest accommodation supplier to the travel industry), acquired a 25% stake (up to 51% option) in Locktrip in 2022. Both Ceos of LockTrip, Nikola Alexandrov and Hristo Tenchev are also the co-founders of Hydrachain. LockTrip is a blockchain-based travel marketplace that claims it allows users to save up to 60% on their bookings by cutting out middlemen. It does seem that bookings on LockTrip are growing. LockTrip had a ICO of their LOC token in 2017 on the Ethereum blockchain and migrated to the hydra blockchain in late 2021. Since March of 2023 Locktrip accepts payments from the customer in fiat, LOC, Hydra, GOMT and CHANGE token, projects also from the Hydra ecosystem. Every booking triggers a burning mechanism to the LOC supply proportionally to its booking value, continuously reducing the total supply, with a custodian mechanism safeguarding the LOC in a separate wallet just in case the booking is cancelled, the customer needs a refund and the LOC needs to be returned instead of burnt. On their website, LockTrip claims to have 2.1 million hotels and apartments on its platform and there’s a whitepaper regarding the tokenization of hotel bookings as NFTs from 2021, but it doesn’t seem like the technology has been implemented? I maybe wrong. Currently I see it’s a project that’s making a real life use case for its token and the surrounding larger ecosystem.
TUI Group: TUI Group with 1,200 travel agencies, 5 airlines, 400 hotels and 16 cruise liners has embraced blockchain technologies back in 2017-2018 and houses its in-house blockchain-enabled systems to maintain real-time records of hotel bed inventories. This information can be offered across markets instantly, without the need for intermediaries like Expedia. TUI also houses all of its contracts with suppliers and customers on a private blockchain, with plans to move some information to a public blockchain to make interactions more seamless. It doesn’t seem like they have launched their platform for public use yet, and they employ the technology in-house.
Takyon: With a current growing network of hotels from mainly Europe joining their platform Takyon are one of the pioneers of tokenizing hotel bookings (so was Winding Tree, but I couldn’t access their latest transformation win.so, and starting from 2017 it seems like they took very long to launch their platform). Takyon essentially tokenizes hotel bookings. Initially it started out as helping customers get a refund when they did last minute cancellations and the hotels couldn’t accept a refund. So there is a real need use case here. Takyon uses blockchain-based platform to streamline the booking process for customers and providers in the hotel industry. The platform allows for secure, direct transactions between customers and service providers, eliminating the need for intermediaries and reducing associated costs. By leveraging blockchain's transparency and security, Takyon ensures that both parties can trust the transaction process.
CoFund and Tokeny: Recently in April 2023, CoFund, in partnership with Tokeny, tokenized a $10 million hotel in Bali. So basically real use case of a fractionization of a hotel asset. This allowed investors to own a piece of the hotel with a minimum investment of $1,000. To meet compliance, ERC-20 tokens and NFTs were replaced with the utilization of ERC-3643 security tokens to ensure regulatory compliance. We’ll probably be seeing more of this in the future with clear regulation and guidelines.
GuestChain: GuestChain is another project that tokenizes hotel bookings. It was just recently launched in March 2023, it’s a blockchain-based solution aimed at resolving the issue of occupancy in the hospitality industry. By tokenizing hotel rooms, hoteliers have many options. Either they can opt to sell redundant rooms to a willing buyer who may trade them on the market, or it can be used to ensure that there are no overbookings, or it can allow the customer to last minute change plans and get a refund via resell market. The hotel bookings are represented as an NFT.
Buk Technologies: Buk Technologies tokenizes hotel bookings. It has adopted blockchain technology to enhance the security and efficiency of their hotel management systems. Through its platform, the company offers a secure, tamper-proof system for managing bookings, payments, and customer reviews. This ensures trust and transparency between the hotel and its guests, ultimately improving the customer experience. Similar to GuestChain, hotel bookings are represented as an NFT, and gives hoteliers many options to optimize revenue plus flexibility for the end user.
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