18 Sep
The rise of internet technologies and services in the past 15 years has significantly changed the travel industry. Throughout the years, only a few companies have established a monopolistic position in this trillion-dollar market. They created elaborated ecosystems that are centralized and have moved away from the most important aspects of the ecosystem — the value of host and guest.
Some online travel agencies do not stand out because they fail to provide an adequate facility description since there is no option to highlight interesting or unique details of their offering. This centralized and rehashed approach leads to monotone content and prevents the industry from evolving.
Accommodation facilities are now built and customized to fit the average tourist. Online reviews by guests have helped agencies differentiate based on ratings. However, this kind of centralized service assumes that customers are not interested in anything beyond accommodations and therefore do not value uniqueness. This leads to the destructive perception of guests by hosts and hoteliers as they treat guests like ordinary people without any additional preferences.
Now it’s time for the big steps and revolution in the travel industry. In this article, we will describe the main challenges of the travel industry and its innovative solutions to bring the industry to a completely different level.
1. What are the challenges of Service providers?
The main challenges of Service Providers, such as accommodations, travel activities, transports, and events in the travel industry, are:
The high fees of service providers as platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com charge individuals from 14% up to 20%.
The second issue is an impossibility to target a particular audience and to offer them customized services. Imagine you have a special flat that you want to be rented via Booking.com. However, you want only specific people to rent your flat as it is designed especially for a particular niche. This tool is completely beyond Booking.com or AirBnB’s possibilities.
How can we solve it?
Moreover, it can be overwhelming to manage the content if you publish your services via Booking.com, AirBnB, and other local service providers. As an individual owning 2 or 45 properties, you want all processes to be as easy as possible and, most importantly, effective with supporting a personalization tool.
2. What are the challenges of Technology providers?
Technology providers — channel managers, property management systems, revenue management systems, booking engines.
The main issue is of the technology providers in the travel industry that all providers have a different data structure which makes all potential collaborations way difficult. Having the same and standardized data structure will save a lot of time and money. For example, if the company wants to connect to Booking.com or Expedia, developers will have to spend at least 5 months to connect to the single system as each company has a different API.
Also, communication between technology providers and other companies takes a lot of time and effort. This can be also automated if every company uses the same data standards and develop automated agreements using new technologies.
Moreover, the further development and maintenance of the technology providers platforms take a lot of time and money.
How can we solve it?
Choosing the same data structure and standardized content creation.
Creating of the tool that will allow using smart automated agreements & ‘hand-shakings’, instead of constant management meetings and waste of time on the creation of agreements.
Choosing to solve problems above will create an opportunity for cheap development of channel managers, property management systems, revenue management systems, and booking engines in the travel industry.
3. What are the challenges of Travel portals (OTAs)?
Travel portals (OTA’s) — travel agencies, service providers, community-focused travel agencies, institutions.
How can we solve it?
The main challenges of Travel portals is an expensive development. The most expensive parts are payment gateways and management of the data that are organized by the back offices in order to upload all multiply content to the portals.
Moreover, all data is inaccessible and, usually, companies require some fees to give access. Bringing up the Siesta cloud will give access to all data that are stored in the blockchain technology.
4. What are the challenges of Affiliates?
Affiliates — travel bloggers, influencers, hotels.
For example, influencers usually work with travel agencies based on bartering conditions. They receive free access to some adventurous tours or hotel rooms in order to promote the services of the brand. However, this work is unstable and it’s not that easy to make these deals all the time. Generally, there are not many ways to monetize influencers’ content, so there is a space for new automated technologies that will support monetization and communication processes, create a trustworthy and supportive environment for both sides.
Also, another interesting challenge for the affiliate activities is connected to service providers, is that hotels do not have many tools for upselling.
5. What are the challenges of Travelers?
Travelers — families, friends, business travelers, other individuals.
How can we solve it?
Today’s travelers have the option of booking their accommodations via OTAs, keeping their choices and preferences concise. They spend a vast amount of time researching their options when booking every part of their journey.
Other than car rentals, there isn’t a one-stop-shop to booking accommodations along with tickets to cultural events along their journey. Many people are traveling in pursuit of their hobbies and interests.
Blockchain technology has the power to shift the paradigm of travel industries by directly connecting customers with providers, and eliminating the costs of middlemen (travel agencies, banks, credit card companies). Blockchain can reduce friction points in the travel industry’s supply chain and has the potential to reduce fees by as much as 30%.
This transformation will lead to an increase in new utility applications, enabling simple and smart searching, and offer bookings over blockchain travel data. These utility applications will play a key role in the adoption of this technology and will be easily used by consumers with no understanding of blockchain.
Many of these problems are already solved by Siesta Cloud, a decentralized ecosystem for the travel businesses powered by blockchain technology. Aiming to simplify the industry and build up a collaborative and customizable environment, where all travel companies can benefit from the ecosystem.
Siesta Cloud has an experienced team that realizes current relationships and problems in the travel and accommodation industry, and a platform that evolves this industry to a new level.
