Well, obviously the pandemic slowed down startup growth and at the same time has kept old companies alive through state subsidies. A few of them might not exist anymore if not for the subsidies. Secondly, GAFA and the extraction of profits from the ecosystem, notably by Google and Facebook have been a challenge for travel companies. Furthermore, the slow adaptation of the public sector to badly needed technological advancements, which, in turn, slow down the success of startups, especially of mobility B2B companies.

HomeToGo built an incredibly strong team with a vision to tackle a hugely complex whilst underrated challenge, solving the fragmented alternative accommodation industry. They’ve managed to bring together a very diverse supply across thousands of points of sale and providers, empowering the industry with technology solutions to fuel growth. To see how far they have come since their founding in 2014 is impressive. They drastically accelerated throughout the pandemic and saw record growth last year, especially with their onsite business – where the complete transaction from discovery to booking to payment happens on their domains. In my opinion, they have effectively evolved to be an Airbnb competitor in Europe. Being the first European tech SPAC IPO is a  huge achievement, possibly bigger than in flights (KAYAK) or hotels (Trivago). If HomeToGo can evolve from a full-stack holiday homes aggregator to the world’s largest marketplace for alternative accommodation, and on its way to becoming a SaaS-enabled operating system, decacorn status is possible in my opinion. A true tech champion for Europe.

Technology is always at the core of its business, so the team at HomeToGo is constantly looking at new use cases and how to effectively evolve its product. While I’m sure they have considered the potential of blockchain, I don’t have knowledge of their future plans in this regard.

We are a rapidly growing hospitality tech startup from Munich. The hospitality industry is notoriously lagging in the digital transformation process, this is mainly due to all-in-one legacy technology and the bottleneck of lacking connectivity. Our open hospitality platform aims to turn this around, having connectivity at the heart of the value proposition. Apaleo allows hotels and accommodation providers to build a custom tech stack by simply connecting the right apps from our app store, or developing custom solutions on top of our API’s. Digitization and automation can thus be precisely tailored to the planned concept – from full service to a pure automated hotel. We have over 500 properties live in 12 countries and our customers range from rapidly scaling concepts like Numa and Limehome, to innovative hotel groups like Novum Hospitality or HR Group.

No. Employing blockchain technology will be just one element of providing a better user experience and creating more value overall, next to improved machine-learning, mixed-reality experience, substantial improvements to payment processing (both blockchain-based and not), and many other tech advancements. Today, providing a better experience than an average travel agent is still what tech players struggle to compete with, this will not be solved through one technology.

From its technical nature, there are benefits for the industry, especially when we think of money transactions, digital identification, loyalty program and business collaborations.  Startups like Winding Tree or Traffics, for example, are working on solutions that make booking a hotel room or a flight easier and more efficient. Via decentralized marketplaces, companies can sell their services directly to other companies as well as consumers. Such a concept will dispense with intermediaries such as Booking.com. For smaller transactions like trips or tickets, “smart contracting” technologies are also interesting, as they allow direct transactions without any time delay. Another example in which travel can utilize blockchain is “digital identification”. In a joint project of various companies, technologies are currently being tested which allow people to check into hotels via smartphone by using an ID-wallet based on blockchain. There are also international collaborations like the Hospitality & Travel SIG which is working on the introduction of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) and Decentralized Digital Identity technologies in tourism. With both approaches, travellers will be able to manage their data independently and identify themselves in hotels or when boarding a plane. This is particularly exciting for tourism, as intermediaries such as Booking.com or HRS are now the ones who decide which data they share with hotels. With SSI, however, guests decide which data they share with whom. In addition, such technologies make a world possible in which waiting at the gate to board a plane becomes obsolete.

Whilst it is a “buzzword”, I’m most excited about the “connected trip”, i.e. truly serving travellers with a seamless companion product that takes the friction out of travel planning and out of travelling itself. Whilst many companies are working on this from very different angles, no one has yet come up with a nearly perfect proposition – neither booking.com nor anyone of the hyped startups pledging to deliver on the promise.