Applying the benefits of blockchain to hotel distribution. This is the intention of BTU Protocol which, after having launched Smart car reservations in Paris, is extending its field of action to the hotel sector. At the CES 2019 trade show in Las Vegas, the French start-up announced the launch of "BTU Hotela booking service that gives you access to over two million hotels at negotiated prices via the site www.btu-hotel.com.
To achieve this, BTU has teamed up with the CDS group, a platform specialising in corporate hotel reservations. "This is a major first. Thanks to CDS, we have been able to put in place the first large-scale deployment of a blockchain system for hotel reservations."said Vidal Chriqui, inventor of the BTU protocol, which enables peer-to-peer bookings to be made without multiplying the number of intermediaries. "0% commission. "BTU was looking for access to hotel facilitiessays Ziad Minkara, CEO and co-founder of CDS. We have entered into this partnership so that their blockchain reservation protocol can access the CDS Hotel Shop database via an API. This means that users can search for hotel availability directly or via other channels."
As well as enabling BTU Protocol to expand into the hotel sector, CDS Groupe is also opening up a new market segment. "Historically, CDS has been a B2B platform for key accounts and travel agencies.says its co-founder. For its part, BTU is reaching out to collaborative networks - media, blogs, influencers. This paves the way for new developments. For example, a blogger may have visited a city, liked a particular hotel and recommended it. Now, thanks to a widget offered by BTU, he can allow his followers to book the establishment directly from the blog. This decentralises the place where the transaction takes place."
For each reservation, the commission usually distributed to the reservation platform is redistributed to end consumersCDS and BTU Protocol, enabling new business introducers to earn BTUs, the crypto-currency of the booking world. "The commission is converted by us into a token that will be registered in the blockchain and pay the influencer. The influencer can then capitalise it or convert it into cash."says Ziad Minkara.
While the arrival of blockchain in hotel reservations is primarily affecting the leisure sector, what are the implications for the hotel industry? outlook of this innovation in the corporate world? "It's still early days, but I see two possible areas of developmentsays Ziad Minkara. Firstly, it can help to target the SME-SMI-SME segment, which does not fit into a traditional commercial distribution scheme. On the other hand, although legislation has not yet changed on this point, it opens the door to another approach to loyalty, a mutualised one, where the rewards in points of the various players are standardised in the form of tokens."
