The first substantial wave of blockchain implementation in the travel industry will likely be for settlement and recording, according to panelists at ARC's Travel Connect conference outside of Washington last month.
Because the technology creates a ledger that is open and shared between transacting parties, it will be especially useful for the recording of transactions between airlines and travel agencies, the panelists said.
Brook Armstrong, CEO of Blockskye, a startup that provides blockchain-based booking and transaction management solutions for the travel and entertainment industries, said that the advantage to blockchain is that "there is a singular data story. It's consistent. It's maintained."
Kieren James-Lubin, CEO of the blockchain-as-a-service provider BlockApps, elaborated on that point, noting that all transactions are agreed upon by the parties before they are added to the ledger. For air travel, he said, that means that airlines and travel agencies won't run into situations in which they have conflicting records.
ARC managing director of product architecture Paul Barber told the panel that with those advantages in mind, ARC has already begun experimenting with blockchain settlement solutions.
Another potential use of blockchain in the travel industry is for bundling transactions that involve numerous parties, for example, airlines, hotels, tour operators and rental car companies.
"We're not saying that blockchain is going to be everywhere and everything in the ecosystem," Armstrong said. But he argued that it is ideally suited for expedited payment and multimodal bundling.