Before getting started let's agree on something: travel and hospitality should be all about ensuring the end user feels special. Otherwise, apart from personal reasons, why would you pay for it?

Having drawn the customer-centricity line in the sand, the question remains: how the industry can leverage blockchain technologies (a potentially immutable, decentralised ledger) to achieve this end goal? Here are two use cases that excite me right now in the intersection of travel, hospitality and blockchain:

• Baggage tracking, with sensors reading and storing data of where your items are in real time in a public blockchain accessible from your phone can be a great step to increase transparency and visibility in what is a common pain point for travellers.
• Blockchain-based review systems. I personally choose destinations (shops, restaurants, etc) based on reviews. After a while, you realise how many of them are biased (often paid for). Verifying that only real customers leave feedback, and making sure all changes are reflected in a secure, immutable record, would greatly increase the added value of reviews.

However, with crypto wallet adoption around 85 million users as of Nov/22 (Statista), completely migrating traditional services now, such as rewards and payments would be a nightmare for users.

Widespread adoption of wallets will unlock superb use cases in the future. Central Bank Digital Currencies will move everyone to the blockchain. In parallel, DIDs (Decentralised Identifiers) will become the norm in verifying identity.

The work for industries in this sector should start now to tease improvements. As it happens with new technologies, the change will probably be abrupt, and early adopters will be able to reap the benefits of a planned roll-out of blockchain based programs.