Report from the Blockchain in Travel summit in NYC, where Settlement and Reconciliation was recognised by many as the most appropriate use of Distributed Ledger Technology.

March 25th, 2019 – I am just back from attending “Blockchain in Travel”, an “invite only” event organised by JetBlue Technology Ventures and held in New York.

A great conference organised by the JetBlue TV team, with top presenters and attendees from the elite of the Travel and Technology industry: SITA, IATA, ARC, KLM, Iberia Express, United Airlines, AWS, IBM to name just a few and many from the Venture capital community: ConsenSys Labs, Pantera Capital, Accenture Ventures and numerous others.

The conversation primarily revolved around the initial learning from travel companies that have begun to use or experiment with Blockchain technology in use cases applied to Travel.

Particularly interesting for me, was the presentation from KLM where they shared the findings of six cases which were analysed and taken to prototype. Of the six, only two were deemed suitable for taking further into pilot, and eventually production. One of these being…

An Intercompany settlement! By establishing a shared ledger, they will eliminate the need to reconcile and track multiple times settlement for internal services rendered.

Another interesting presentation was from Emirates Airlines and Loyyal. Loyyal is providing Emirates with a new blockchain based loyalty management platform; with this, Emirates is able to manage and improve its relationship with partners and travellers while simultaneously increasing revenue.

What are two main benefits they are delivering?

It Improves the reconciliation process and expedite partner integration, does this sound familiar?

All other presentations and panels were also extremely interesting and overall reflected the common view that when multiple companies needs to “exchange transaction data”, but not “carry out a transaction”, Blockchain technology can achieve this efficiently and cost effectively for everyone.

Payment was mentioned by many as another logical case; however, general adoption is still quite far off. In any case, Cryptocurrencies will slot into existing workflows as another currency or payment method, meaning the impact will be minimal from a business prospective.

The jury is also still out on whether Blockchain can deliver anything when it comes to product and inventory management, where huge scalability and real time performance are key in winning sales, as anyone working in Travel knows well.

For now we are not seeing these projects take flight; but instead it is companies such as Travel Ledger, whose practical approach, is gaining great traction.