Travel and Hospitality applications of BUK protocol
TL;DR
BUK Protocol allows creation of Blockchain based NFT bookings and tickets ensuring provenance of inventory and enabling creation of open and efficient secondary markets for travel bookings. Thus:
Enabling creation of ticketing marketplaces for primary and secondary sale Like this
Creating a wider distribution for ticket sales across multiple marketplaces (Rarible, OpenSea, etc.) with a single integration Like this
Introduction
The travel and hospitality industry confronts a myriad of challenges, among them the proliferation of closed, informal markets for tickets and hotel booking resale. Within these obscure networks, the resale of bookings and tickets occurs unchecked, fostering an environment ripe for fraudulent activities such as the sale of counterfeit or unconfirmed reservations and unreasonable pricing for high-demand inventory. This dark ecosystem not only poses risks for consumers who may unwittingly purchase invalid bookings but also denies hotels and airlines the opportunity to control or have a stake in these legitimate resale transactions.
Moreover, the absence of transparency in these transactions exacerbates customer service issues, as resolving disputes arising from fraudulent bookings can be both time-consuming and resource-intensive. This underscores the urgent need for a solution that provides verifiable and secure resale transactions, safeguarding both consumers and industry stakeholders from the perils of the opaque resale marketplace.
BUK Protocol addresses the inherent challenges of the opaque booking resale market through the tokenization of bookings and the utilization of blockchain technology. Tokenization and on-chain events ensures transparency and verifiability in every resale transaction.
This note explores how BUK protocol can enhance air ticketing and hotel bookings verifiability and also opens up possibilities for a transparent secondary market for these assets.
BUK Protocol's value for travel and hospitality industry
By putting bookings on-chain, BUK Protocol creates a decentralized marketplace where each resale transaction is securely recorded and accessible to all parties involved. This eradicates the risk of counterfeit or unconfirmed bookings, providing consumers with peace of mind and safeguarding hotels and airlines from revenue loss due to fraudulent activities.
Moreover, this also opens up liquidity and distribution of these transactions - users on one travel portal list their resold inventory on-chain, which can then be bought by users on any other travel portal or marketplace. This increases chances of resale and creates a wider distribution for resold inventory. Finally, smart contracts guarantee that hotels and airlines receive their rightful commissions for every resale, thereby incentivizing participation in the resale market while also promoting fair and equitable distribution of revenue.
Lastly, NFTs based ticket bookings offer airlines and hotels valuable insights into pricing dynamics as tickets and reservations are traded on secondary markets, empowering them to implement dynamic pricing strategies effectively. This not only optimizes revenue generation but also fosters customer loyalty, as travelers are incentivized to engage with the brand through exclusive resale opportunities and tailored promotions.
Advantages to travelers
For travelers, NFT-based secondary markets provide unparalleled convenience, security, and a new option of resale instead of canceling. Engaging in NFT based secondary markets enables travelers to buy or sell airline tickets and hotel room reservations in a transparent and tamper-proof environment, alleviating concerns regarding counterfeit tickets or inflated prices. Additionally, NFT tickets and reservations may unlock exclusive perks or upgrades, enhancing the overall travel experience and adding value to their bookings. Through NFT ownership, travelers establish a sense of authenticity and ownership, strengthening their connection to the travel experience and cultivating a vibrant community of enthusiasts.
The solution also enhances customer service by streamlining dispute resolution processes. Firstly, it empowers consumers with confidence, knowing that they are purchasing valid and authenticated bookings. Secondly, with all resale transactions verifiably recorded on the blockchain, resolving disputes related to fraudulent bookings becomes more efficient and straightforward. This not only reduces the burden on customer service teams but also improves the overall trust and reputation of the travel industry
BUK protocol stack
BUK Protocol, in general, consists of various layers for dApp developers and asset owners.
Factory Smart Contracts: BUK Protocol's smart contracts cover the on-chain lifecycle of perishable dynamic assets, offering modules like tokenization, dNFT, Treasury, Marketplace, and Interfaces based on asset requirements.
Ingestion Oracles: Validate asset provenance, bridging producer apps and tokenization smart contracts.
Protocol Contracts: The Aggregated Marketplace ensures a universal cross-asset marketplace, while the BUK Treasury contract manages protocol-related commissions and charges transparently.
Consumer Oracles: Provide seamless integration and frictionless interoperability for inventory marketplaces.
Web2 Integration Oracles: Bridge BUK Protocol with traditional web2 systems, facilitating smooth integration with existing payment platforms.
BUK protocol stack for travel and hospitality
With BUK Protocol, every flight ticket and every hotel room for each night is a Non Fungible Token which represents the right to travel in that flight sector or stay in that particular room of that hotel for a specific night. However, unlike a traditional ticketing or booking this token that represents your booking which can be traded and sold to someone else. This offers tremendous flexibility with airlines, hotels and intermediaries collecting commissions from these trades. This also opens up major opportunities for better price discovery and timelines that would have once been impossible. With trades and transactions stored securely on the blockchain, participants can benefit from full transparency.
BUK Protocol stack for travel and hospitality provides hotels, airlines, ticketing agencies and travel portals with mechanisms to quickly convert their digital booking tickets into NFTs and launch their own trading marketplaces. Key components of BUK protocol for event ticketing are:
Marketplace contracts: Enable trading of NFT ticket bookings on-chain. Empower users to hold bookings and tickets in their own wallets and trade directly amongst themselves, while hotels, airlines and travel portals can still earn royalties from the trading.
Factory Contracts: Enable minting and trading of NFT booking and tickets on-chain. BUK template contracts allow developers to call APIs and leverage the protocol to perform all on-chain processes. These contracts have in-built methods to control the annihilation of NFTs after the checkout / travel date and ensuring royalties to organizers irrespective of where the trading happens.
Oracles: Dealing with the travel and hospitality industry requires interface to real-world scenarios. For example, when a hotel booking gets traded, it is important to capture the name of the new guest and update it in the hotel's PMS (Property Management System). BUK Protocol consists of Oracles which bridge real and blockchain worlds by facilitating exchange of such real world data.
Custom marketplace UX: BUK also provides a ready scaffolding to create new closed or open marketplaces and dApps which can operate within or outside the hotel, airline or travel portal websites.
Aggregated marketplace integrations: Using BUK template contracts, developers can seamlessly enable listing and trading of NFT tickets on other marketplaces - these can be web3 marketplaces like Rarible or Opensea or traditional reselling portals. All trades across marketplaces will accrue trading royalties to the hotel, airline or travel portal.
Future development
BUK Protocol is committed to growing the feature base for dynamic assets within the web3 ecosystem. New features such as providing staking capabilities to perishable assets can further enhance the value of these assets - ticketing companies building on the BUK protocol will be able to leverage these features as they get released to the ecosystem. Some examples of expected future use-cases include:
Perps Trading: Perpetual index trading, leveraging the pricing of hotel rooms in a specific city or airline tickets on a designated sector, becomes an innovative and dynamic endeavor with the integration of NFT technology. By issuing all hotel room reservations and airline tickets as NFTs, a transparent and immutable record of each transaction is established on the blockchain. This enables traders to access real-time data on the pricing trends of these NFTs, allowing for the creation of perpetual indices that accurately reflect the supply and demand dynamics of the travel market. Traders can then speculate on the future value of these indices, taking positions based on their expectations of fluctuations in hotel room rates or airline ticket prices. This novel approach to perpetual index trading not only provides traders with a diversified investment opportunity but also offers valuable insights into the broader trends shaping the travel and hospitality industry.
Validated Loyalty Programs: Even though the booking NFTs can be traded as many times as possible, but once check-in completed the NFT becomes non-tradable thus creating a verifiable proof of travel or stay. BUK Protocol issues a Proof-of-Stay NFT to the guest who stays in the hotel room after travel / check-out. Ownership of NFTs directly verifiable on chain opens up a myriad of possibilities for airlines and hotel chains to run a verified and authentic loyalty program. These NFTs can be used to offer discounts and promotions for add-on services such as gym or bar access. They can increase customer loyalty and their on-chain nature also fosters a healthy competition among members of the loyalty program.
Cross-chain Integration: Airline and Hotel brands will benefit from cross-chain services of BUK protocol to provide cross-chain and cross-marketplace proliferation. Airlines, Hotels or their agents can mint and set up their markets on any chain of their choice, and leverage BUK protocol’s cross-chain interoperability layer to cater to users on multiple chains.
Integration with the BUK Protocol lays the foundation for an extensive hotel and airline ticket trading ecosystem, opening up new opportunities to enhance the capabilities of ticketing engines in the travel and hospitality industry.
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