Blockchain technology in the tourism industry

This desk research and interview based thesis is aimed to get a general understanding of the topic of blockchain in the tourism industry. The thesis structure informs the reader about blockchain technology in the tourism industry by showcasing actual use cases. Then innovation of diffusion theory is thoroughly explained due to it being a constant subject regarding the discussion of blockchain technology. Although the technological advancements have risen with high speed during the past 10 years, the tourism and travel industry is still facing challenges in many parts of their processes. The industry deals with a remarkable amount of risk from various features such as misuse of processes, fraud and corruption that could be potentially fixed with the use of blockchain. Desk-research and interviews were employed as the qualitative data collection methods as well as 4 theme interviews with experts related on the study subject in Finland were conducted. These methods were chosen particularly due to the nature of the subject being a very speculated subject with a limited amount of scholarly literature. This also allowed the researcher to generalize the findings in the results and discussion section. The research and writing of this paper took place between October 2017 and October 2020. The research came to conclusion that while blockchain platforms could reduce costs of administrational transactions of any data and enhance security questions, it is unlikely it will disrupt the tourism industry in near future. This is mainly because there is a certain lack of knowledge about blockchain’s range of applications among the industry. The technology is still being mostly used as prototype, whilst there are other technological innovations constantly being established that could even out-run blockchain’s abilities. Also, current monopolies are deeply rooted in most organizations, governments, and regulations