T3- Travel, Tourism, Technology

Everyone is talking about and watching how the Blockchain is and can revolutionize the way business transactions are and will be conducted across their respective business spectrum. I have learned much from IBM tutorials and I have my own disposition regarding Blockchain and its potential in our travel and tourism industry. So what is it? Blockchain belongs to the DARQ Tech, where D stands for Distributed Ledger and blockchain is a logical model to implement distributed ledger.  What is a Distributed Ledger? A ledger in accounting terms is a book that records the transactions. In IT term a book is a database, so associatively it is a database that records the transaction, it is decentralized, there is no one central repository, authority or a third party mediator performing the bookkeeping, it is distributed, the work on this ledger and the information stored on this ledger is not localized to one system, it is distributed and shared among various participatin...

My teacher Jack Ma in one of his inspirational discussion spoke about his near future vision regarding travel, he said "one phone would be all that one would need to travel around the world". The digital revolution is making the vision come true. Let's assume a consumer international travel experience that has three distinct phases Pre-Travel, In-Travel and Post Travel. During all these phases there are certain activities that are desirable; Pre Travel - Passport, Visa, Air Tickets, Insurance, and Foreign Exchange. In Travel - Check-ins, Purchases, Payments, Photo capture, Sharings, Maps, and Translations. Post Travel - Refunds, Feedback, and Repurchase. For Passport - All Passports will soon be electronic passports with embedded chips and data, these passports would be used to self-scan on the e-gates for permitted entry. The new passports are similar to the old passport and would have three unique usages, it has a data page that contains travelers' aut...

DARQ- An Acronym that stands for Distributed Ledgers (D), Artificial Intelligence (R), Extended Reality (R), and Quantum Computing (Q). As people’s lives become more enmeshed with technology, unique opportunities are arising for companies to deliver a new product or service —not just customized for specific customers, but for their needs at a specific point in time. (Accenture, Travel Technology Vision 2019) D - Distributed Ledgers include technologies such as Cryptocurrency and Blockchain, it allows consumers and businesses to conduct business transactions and collaborations dependably transparently, with verification of data & sources, self-executing contracts for insurance, rentals, and financial management. Handling medical emergencies during travel, single currency global forex transaction, automated VAT refunds, claim settlements and easy e-visa applications. A - Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning can automate mundane tasks, reduce human errors, streamline...

Tourism is leading the diffusion of information and communication technologies in commerce, revolutionizing the creation and consumption of tourism products and services, structures and systems of its operations and delivery, making the social and economic impacts across its entire value chain as well as it's peripheral sectors, benefitting travelers, workers, and the businesses worldwide. The evolution of a highly-skilled, highly-informed and highly-demanding traveler, who wishes to explore new destinations and live new experiences, has inspired new technical and non-technical developments like low-cost carriers, fast trains, Airbnb, and uber driven shared services as well as the internet. The emergence of Innovative technologies and their utilization are increasingly critical in determining tourist consumer experience and behavior.  These technologies affect tourist's entire decision-making process, from browsing and searching product/ destination information to comparin...

Bluetooth technology has been traditionally associated with exchanging data between mobile devices over a short distance, using short wave communication and building P2P personal area networks. A Bluetooth Mesh uses a Network Strategy that allows us to establish M2M relationships between wireless devices and allows any device in the mesh network to relay data in a form of messages to any other devices in the range, not necessarily in the direct radio range but all at once. The publish/subscribe messaging system publishes messages to all devices across the network, the device subscribed to the network receives the message and reacts, message from the source device to target device passes through a series of hops and can, therefore, span a wide physical area and support tens, hundreds and thousands of devices, where each device may act as a router. The Heartbeat message relayed in fixed intervals by the relay device allows the network to update its topology and prevents unnecessary f...