By Aditya Sanghi
Even though at a slow pace, the hotel industry always adopts and experiments with newer technologies. We saw this when the cloud solutions came in, and now we are witnessing the same thing with blockchain technology. Though we are yet to see widespread adoption of this new digital innovation, we can still take a look at how it is going to benefit hotels.
Before that let’s see what blockchain is all about.
Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionise transactions and information storage. In this, cryptography securely stores all data. And once recorded, that data can’t be altered. Additionally, it time-stamps all records, ensuring easy traceability.
Now let’s explore its use case in hotel operations.
Data security
Data security is one of the biggest concerns for hotels globally. But blockchain technology has the potential to help them with this due to its decentralised and secured nature. It ensures their data is always safe from cyber attacks. It can help hotels enhance the security of their financial transactions, ensuring guests are not worried about their credit card data being compromised.
Loyalty programs
Hotels rely heavily on repeat guests to reduce their acquisition costs; therefore, offering loyalty programs is paramount. They can leverage the power of tokenisation to allow guests to monetize their loyalty points into a type of cryptocurrency. They can redeem them anywhere and anytime as per their requirements. For example, if they want, they can trade their hotel reward points for anything else that they require. Most importantly, thanks to the technology’s security feature, it prevents loyalty fraud.
Room reservation
This is another important application of blockchain in the hotel industry to watch out for. Powered by blockchain technology, smart contracts can automate the payment process when a reservation is made, saving time and eliminating errors that may have occurred with human intervention. By decentralising the whole process, it will allow hotels to connect directly with their customers. It ensures that the hotel gets paid directly to save big on third-party commission costs.
Smart rooms
Blockchain technology can enable hotels to customize and enhance the guest experience by knowing their room preferences. For example, hotels can set guest rooms at the preferred temperature and lighting right before they check-in to the room. They can integrate connected sensors with the blockchain system, track usage data of in-room amenities, and ensure that everything is in working condition.
Verifying and accessing guest data
Hotels are doing everything they can to prevent identity fraud. This is important to keep both guests and the hotel safe. In this context, blockchain can help them in a big way. Hotels can leverage this technology to verify guest identity via a distributed network of computers. It leads to a faster check-in process as guests can share their IDs before they walk into the hotel. Moreover, it will also allow hotels to store all guest data for easier and department-wide access. With this, hotels can understand their guests and drive better engagement by offering personalized services.
To sum up, blockchain technology offers significant benefits to the hotel industry. Its implementation can enhance operational efficiency, transparency, and security at all levels of hotel operations. Most importantly, all these benefits lead to the ultimate outcome – an improved guest experience.
The author is co-founder, CEO, Hotelogix
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