Winding Tree blockchain might upgrade travel industry

Online platforms like Airbnb or Booking have transformed the travel industry, effectively cutting the middleman: now a user can contact the landlord of a house or a room in a foreign country and rent it all by himself.

The fees for booking did not disappear, now people just pay the booking site instead. The Swiss non-profit organization seems to have found a solution: Winding Tree, a blockchain platform focused on this particular topic, will allow to communicate and make travel-related deals and agreements without any traditional 3rd party fees.

However, transactions costs to execute contracts will remain, but they are not comparable to anything one can see on today’s travel-related websites. The Next Web has contacted the founder and chief operating officer of Winding Tree, Pedro Anderson, and he told: “Blockchain allows these unnecessary [travel] costs to be eliminated entirely”, so that both travelers and suppliers win.

We should not just expect Airbnb and other platforms to ignore this. They might be developing something to counter this threat to their business at this very moment.