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Existing practices for managing demand and operations for group activities, e.g., business meetings, family/friends leisure travel, weddings, and other one-time events, are characterized by wildly disparate standards and are served by an equally wide range of service providers. The current provider marketplace runs the gamut from Cvent, a global giant focused on Fortune 1000 corporations, to individual hotels, meeting/event planners, and niche market specialists, who supply their own supporting technology with varying levels of sophistication, accuracy, and user-friendliness.
CCT does not seek to solve the problems of fragmentation and lack of standards in this market in our first phases of development. Instead we aim to introduce blockchain principles via smart contracts to standardize and improve transparency in back office activities such as financial settlements, transaction validation, and record-keeping. In conjunction with the application of blockchain to those processes, CCT’s solution optimizes the processes themselves via robotic process automation (RPA), creating cost savings, and increasing efficiency and accuracy to fundamental business activities. Introduction of smart contracts will eliminate the role of rent-taking middlemen, improve trust and transparency, and lower fees to both suppliers and distributors.
Learn MoreWe’ve referenced the chilling effects of the growth of the major OTAs (Booking Holdings, Expedia and CTrip) on innovation and new entrants to the global distribution ecosystem, and there has been a similar effect on suppliers of travel services that want to expand globally but cannot due to high fees for integrating with the major OTAs as well as critical business support processes such as credit card fees and other financial settlement and reconciliation activity. CCT sees blockchain-based platforms as a solution to this problem, specifically by allowing more small hotels and providers of ancillary services such as local tours, city/beach/mountain activities, and restaurants, that do not currently sell on the global OTAs to participate in global online distribution.
This ‘long tail’ of travel has been targeted by the global distribution giants for years without any notable successes, with Booking Holdings’ difficulties in achieving a profit with its OpenTable acquisition being a contemporary example. Besides the absence of domain expertise among the OTAs and GDSs in marketing and selling long tail services online, the technology investment and processing costs to the providers of these services has been prohibitive in the current paradigm. The CCT founders’ extensive experience in this segment – including failed attempts with previous employers to find suitable technology solutions – gives us the assurance and knowledge that can lead to success with RPA-driven process improvements and cost savings in a blockchain-based alternate distribution environment.
Learn MoreThe evolving nature of artificial intelligence and distributed ledger technology has created confusion and uncertainty in the marketplace about how and whether these new disciplines can be adopted to improve travel companies’ businesses. Domain expertise in the two technology areas as they apply to the travel industry is almost entirely non-existent, so Clear Chain has created a consulting practice to help industry firms to understand and evaluate the efficacy and ROI of using these technologies inside their enterprises.
Each of our founders has already established himself as a thought leader in the travel industry and has translated that into successful consulting practices. Our individual and now collective networks are deep, global and current, and we have been engaging with executives and other decision-makers as a core activity of our marketplace validation research and related activities, allowing us to create a proprietary set of best practices in the use of AI and DLT in the travel industry.
The founders’ executive experience at the intersection of technology and business, combined with our and our partners’ expertise in AI and DLT, distinguishes Clear Chain from other consulting entities that are in the marketplace today.
Our standard curriculum template for AI and blockchain technology/business education is easily customized for individual clients. Clear Chain’s consulting engagements incorporate an evaluation of the business processes to be optimized, interviews with key employees to understand long and short-term goals for the business, workshops to validate our initial conclusions with stakeholders, and a full plan for a proof of concept trial as the final deliverable based on the use case(s) identified through the process.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Clear Chain’s consulting practice can help your business grow, please click the following link, or email us at contact@clearchaintravel.com
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