Blockchain technology applied to the hotel sector

It is remarkable how much research material is in place in defense of blockchain technology as the beginning of a new era, based on the quote by the authors Olea and Glenn Tjon (2019) "Blockchain is possibly the most important disruptive technology of the last decade that is little by little changing the world of business, allowing transactions to be recorded permanently within a decentralized network, which uses a distributed registry, which means that all its participants are owners of the information. This is known as blockchain, that is, information chronologically linked by means of a hash or cryptographic code." This could indeed become the trend in the next five years with a multitude of developments and applications in the field and even more so when institutions such as the World Economic Forum (WEF, 2015) foresee in their calculations and according to such data, that by the year 2027 10% of global GDP will be stored in this type of technology, which is mainly due to the applications that it has plus the use of virtual currencies.

Undoubtedly, the potential of using blockchain technology in the hotel sector is immense as it will improve the overall customer experience, increase hotel efficiency and there will be greater interest in investing in the hotel industry due to increases in terms of EBITDA. However it is necessary to maintain some objectivity and investigate the current and available blockchain technology closely following the advances that occur in order to explore possible applications to the hotel industry. These advances and their implementation will have a positive impact on companies that bet on this technology, achieving important competitive advantages. Some of the areas in which knowledge will be advanced and that will help hotel management teams to make better decisions in an environment of greater confidence and increasing efficiency will be; geolocation and customer tracking, geolocation and food tracking, loyalty programs, digital identification and smart contracts among others.

In the very near future, blockchain technology will create new markets, opening up multiple opportunities applicable to the hotel sector, improving the customer experience, automating processes, reducing intermediation costs, creating greater value for shareholders and different agents as well as broad access to new forms of financing via tokenization. At Maestros Hoteleros, we firmly believe that the new economy based on blockchain technology is and will be a disruptive technology and we will see new applications at great speed that will ultimately democratize, even more so, the tourism sector and, without a doubt, the tourism sector hotelier.