Web3 technologies could change the travel industry

NFTickets could help airlines and events increase revenue through resales.

Web3 technologies are being used by a lot of companies and industries, and the travel industry is no exception.

The Argentinian airline Flybondi announced a strategic partnership with TravelX on Wednesday. TravelX is a blockchain technology company that tokenizes flight tickets. The goal of the partnership is to let people buy airline tickets as non-fungible tokens through Binance Pay and pay for them with USD Coin (USDC).

Facundo Diaz, the co-founder of TravelX, told Cointelegraph that he was sure that Web3 technologies could help the travel industry grow, both in terms of the size of the market and the number of uses and benefits for travellers:

"There were 1.2 billion airline passengers in 1990, and the market size of the industry was worth $250 billion. Between 1990 and 2007, the number of passengers grew to 2.5 billion, and the market size grew to $510 billion.

He told me that there was another rise in 2008. When the International Air Transport Association made it mandatory for its members to use e-ticketing services, the number of travellers went up to 4.5 billion a year, and the industry was worth $870 billion.

Diaz thinks that NFTickets could help travellers because it would let them auction, sell, trade, and move tickets from one wallet to another. This would give them full control over how they use and get rid of their travel assets.

"Think about being able to sell your NFTicket if you can't go or send it as a gift to your mom via text message whenever you want." Also, NFTickets could help airlines make more money by letting them resell tickets on the secondary market. Diaz told Cointelegraph, "Every time an NFTicket is resold on the secondary market, the airline gets a share of the profit based on the smart contract's revenue sharing model."

Diaz said this about his hopes for a bright and exciting future for the area:

"We think that the blockchain-based infrastructure for distribution and retail that we are building for the travel industry will help it become more open, with clear smart contracts that don't hide fees or conditions."
He also said, "But I think the most interesting new uses will be the ones we haven't thought of yet."

Diaz said that TravelX wants to set an example for the standardisation of NFTickets in the travel industry, but the company has no plans to corner the market.

"We just made the first layer of infrastructure, and now we're letting the travel industry and new players, like exchanges, DeFi protocols, or entrepreneurs, connect to it and/or build new solutions on top of it."
He said that the blockchain company is building its infrastructure on the Algorand network because of its "performance, security, cost, and scalability, but mostly because it is an environmentally friendly blockchain that, because of its proof of stake, has reached the status of being carbon negative."

For now, TravelX, a company based in the United States, is focusing on airline inventory distribution, which is the most difficult area of the travel industry to change for the better. Mr. Diaz said, "TravelX is in talks and working with more than 60 airlines from Europe, the Middle East, and the United States to get them to use TravelX's standards and infrastructure for managing and distributing their inventory."