How Blockchain Improve Tourism Quality

by Dwi Lias Susanti

New year holiday will come nearly. Everyone already packs their bag for vacation. After been hit by the covid 19 pandemics, we all need a stress reliever. A great trip across the nation can be a solution while still maintain our healthy protocols. When traveling, safe and comfortable accommodation is a basic need, both for our life and luggage. All traveler never wants to lose their baggage or have difficulty finding a hotel in a foreign place. All they want is easy tourism access and gets additional services for their visit. When visiting other countries, exchanging currency sometimes become trouble needs to worry since money changer facility is not available in many spots.

Tourist needs can be random and unpredictable. Good coordination and communication become a success factor in the tourism industry. For a tour agent that offer tour packages, they need to ensure all the process starting from ticket availability, transportation, hotel room, and the attraction ticket. All of this could be troublesome if the process not traceable and transparent. This problem will affect the budgeting process and determining the price.

There are urgent needs in tourism for a traceable, transparent, and certainty process. This factor is where Blockchain technology comes to solve the problems. Build a tourism network with blockchain will increase tourist satisfaction. There is five tourism problem that can improve by using blockchain technology.

1. Faster Transaction
   Faster transaction means each service providers in the supply chain receives money faster to operate. Each provider can deliver the process better, and they will know how much serving package they need to prepare. Every transaction will have transferred directly to everyone in the supply chain. No more deposits that needed an amount of capital and tour agent can allocate the budget for improving their service.
2. Loyalty Program
   The first sale always becomes the hardest, with creating a loyal customer that does repeat order is the number one strategy for a business to survive. Creating a loyalty program such as a reward point with blockchain engage more customers since it transparent and permanent record. Customer points can easily have traced, and they won’t lose their points since it was irreversible. These programs will make the customer come back to where it is released.
3. Creating Tour Packages
   Similar to how blockchain is applied in the logistic industry, creating tour packages will using blockchain in the same way. Knowing the process in the whole supply chain, detect earlier when a problem occurs will make the supply chain more adaptable. With all this information creating a budget and attractive selling price will become easier.
4. Transparent Rating
   For a customer, knowing what kind of service they will get is a must. What person or hotel will serve them? This is why customer reads rating and review. Sometimes online reviews can be deceiving. Nobody knows who write the review. This review will make misinformation of the real condition and harm us as a customer. With blockchain, every testimony will be traceable. We can know who delivered this information and prevent us from misinformation.
5. Baggage tracing
   Travelling won’t complete without shopping. Buying an iconic gift, snack, clothes, or other stuff creates extra baggage. We need to ensure all of our items are flying with us back home. Using a smart contract with blockchain will be the best choice since it all the requirement need to meet before proceeding.

Time is something precious. Enjoying every moment with your loved one is a top priority. Traveling together could become the best way to spend time. Advances in technology will give us many choices for traveling.