According to 2017 statistics the number of global tourists reached 12.67 billion, 1.7 times of the global population, and the gross revenue of global tourism market was $5.3 trillion, most of which came from these four giants: Priceline, Expedia, CTrip, TripAdvisor.
The four horsemen of the Online Tourism Market own a cadre of small players and the traffic of its platforms – Booking. com,, Agoda, Kayak, Expedia, Hotels.com, ctrip.com, Qunar.Com, eLong, and TripAdvisor all dominate online travel sales.
Taking advantage of this huge data traffic, they weaken travel resource suppliers’ bargaining power, set up information barriers to capture consumer surplus. The current mainstream centralized travel mode has become the pain point of the industry, and there is an urgent need for a new feasible scheme to transform the entire tourism ecosystem. With the debut of Bitcoin in 2009, Blockchain technology has become a hot trend. Through distributed data storage, P2P transmission, consensus mechanism, and encryption algorithm, the data can be stored in network nodes in the form of block series instead of being recorded only on the centralized server. Travel will be one of the early industries transformed by the simplicity and lowered costs using a public blockchain.
Decentralization makes the data traceable and tamper-proof. Driven by the tide of the times, the Blockchain industry has grown rapidly, and the innovative consciousness of most countries in the world has awakened. They have realized the considerable prospects of Blockchain technology and ushered in a new era of Blockchain economy. It also indicates the urgency of building a credible Internet for human civilization
According to the Report on World Tourism Economy Trends (2018) issued by World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF), the growth rate of the global tourism market in 2018 is still higher than that of the global economy. The revenue growth rate of the global tourism market is expected to reach 6.7%, which is higher than the International Monetary Fund’s forecast of 3.6% of the global GDP growth rate and the World Bank’s forecast of 2.9%.
Tripedia is well versed in the situation and pain points of the tourism industry. With the development of the Internet, Global Distribution Systems and Online Travel Agencies, two types of intermediaries in the global tourism market, have entered the field of vision and monopolized the booking system of the tourism industry.
The tourism industry is developing during this growth period and it seems that the customers are immersed in the convenience of online booking, but the industry problems are underneath. With tremendous data the major OTAs possess, they monopolize the market, delay payment to suppliers, and impose restrictions on payment methods, which makes small and medium-sized travel resource suppliers impossible to survive, and cloud consumers’ access to information.
Due to this, it’s difficult to form a transparent and healthy tourism ecosystem. The Blockchain technology interprets this pain point from a new perspective and provides creative solutions. Decentralization makes the data traceable and tamper-proof, and the industry has been ripe for disruption. It is clear tokens like Tripedia are here to provide a solution to the inherent problems which can revolutionize the travel token market.
