Since Airbnb rose to prominence in the early 2010’s, the travel industry has been affected by technology in a way that few industries have. No longer do we have to head down to a travel agent to book a flight, we book hotels completely online through sites like trivago, we check out the sites via Facebook, we see the all the local restaurants on Yelp, and the rest can be taken care of by Airbnb.

As travel technology becomes increasingly prevalent, and the internet and travel seem to go hand in hand, the question remains; what’s the next technological innovation to disrupt the travel space?

The answer is in fact blockchain technology.

How will blockchain affect travel you may ask? Loyalty points.

It’s widely publicised that the reason airlines push their loyalty rewards programs so much is because they make more money on the loyalty points than they do from the actual flights themselves. Loyalty points present within airlines a fundamental shift in the way people fly, as instead of using flybuys points for purchases, the individual airlines have taken on board their own loyalty programs for their customers. Instead of being loyal to flybuys, customers are now truly loyal to their airline. I know for myself that I love Virgin specifically for this reason.

While bitcoin has been around for almost a decade now, the idea of cryptocurrency is still foreign to many users. The underlying technology behind cryptocurrency however, the blockchain, presents in itself the cleared store of value of any technological system in recent years (with the exception of Paypal).

The way blockchain technology works is by taking a ledger (like a big database), and making sure that every person has a copy of the database, rather than one person. What that allows people to do is verify transactions without using a bank. This type of technology is really important when it comes to loyalty points, as for the first time a single airline doesn’t have to use its own technology to store the database of points, it can decentralise them on lots of different computers. In addition to that, with blockchain technology at the helm, loyalty points can be attributable to real dollar values, which can be spent across airlines.

While the use of blockchain technology itself might not affect us as consumers right away, in the near future we may see much better deals in exchange for our loyalty points (as loyalty points become more valuable).

Interested in blockchain? Get in touch at ryan.wilson@s2m.com.au