Australian Travel company, Webjet, in collaboration with Microsoft, is claiming a world-first for the travel sector and has just completed a six-month Blockchain proof of concept for the travel industry aimed to transform the way hotel bookings are made by using Blockchain to increase transparency and accuracy.
Speaking to the AFR, Webjet managing director John Guscic said the company was testing Blockchain for its business-to-business wholesaling arm which offers hotels to travel agents.
“The dirty secret of the global hotel industry is that roughly one in 25 transactions globally end up with breakage where someone provides a service and doesn’t get paid for it … which is an enormous number,” he said.
“The reason that happens is because you have a lot of intermediaries in this space who are passing information to each other sub-optimally, and things get lost or not followed up. We believe Blockchain will create a more seamless, less intrusive, more robust supply chain than currently exists across all those parties.”
“It is, in essence, the decentralised trust platform that we are delivering into the environment,” said Webjet chief information officer Graham Anderson.
Webject worked with Microsoft to establish the Blockchain, which is being hosted in its Azure cloud. Microsoft has provided resources as it looks to build out its own Blockchain capabilities.
