Most people associate blockchain with bitcoin and wild fluctuations. However, there are many companies out there trying to apply this technology to improve different aspects of our lives.

Hotel prices are one of the biggest costs that people need to look out for when going on holiday. Especially for longer trips, those nights spent in a nice accommodation begin to add up. A lot of the time, hotels have no choice but to charge these prices. Although sites like expedia.com and booking.com have made it easier to search and compare prices for different rooms, they also charge a hefty commission fee for being listed on their platforms. These fees may sometimes be as high as 30–50% of the listed price. Usually smaller hotels with smaller marketing budgets get the shorter end of the stick.

Concierge.io is trying to break out of this practice and offer a win-win situation for both hoteliers and holidaymakers. Their solution is to offer 0% commission fees for listed rooms on their platform. Hotel owners earn more by not having to pay such a high fee and they can then in turn pass on some of the savings to the customers. Concierge.io reports that it can up to 45% cheaper for consumers.

To make this possible, they are utilizing blockchain technology. They are using the NEO protocol whose benefits include much more transactions per second than ethereum. Instead of charging hotels a commission fee, Concierge will make use of sponsored/featured listings at the top of searches. This will be limited to 3 per page so that users are not flooded with paid adverts.

The other benefits of blockchain include a decentralised marketplace which allows hotel owners to quickly and easily update information about their rooms to be displayed to customers. Bookings are made using smart contracts coded onto the blockchain. This alleviates many of the problems such as double booking or unavailable rooms because of the immutable ledger properties of the blockchain. Disputes can be settled automatically via smart contract. Concierge will also allow payments to be made using their CGE token, which allows for faster and transparent transactions.

With this innovative new technology, the travel industry should be due for a shake-up. Hopefully, the next time you are on holiday, you’ll be spending less on the trip and spending more time having fun.