The NuGenesis Interactive NFTs can transform the tourism industry, which is already primed by for adoption.  Technology has given rise to a connected generation of smart tourists.  NuGenesis interactive NFTs are ideal to empower trust-building and promote more disintermediation‚ secure travel-related transactions‚ creative loyalty programs‚ traceable tourism products and activities‚ and reliable online travel reviews.

NuGenesis has 4 patents pending on key aspects of its blockchain infrastructure.  NuGenesis NFTs are Gas less.  That is, free to make and exchange.  This is critical for the evolution of NFTs from their current static form.  Dynamic, interactive NFTs will involve the many transactions and extrinsics that, the prohibitive gas fees on Ethereum, stunt the experimentation necessary for innovation. 

Yet the most important break-through by NuGenesis technology is transcending the limitation on scale and speed.  NuGenesis transaction speeds are beyond a million transactions per second.  There is no limitation to how many parallel processing chains can be added to its multi-chain blockchain network system.  There is no limitation on transaction speed.  

Furthermore, the more advanced aspect of the technology is the 200 millisecond block finality.  When combined with its various consensus mechanisms, it means that its load balancers are furiously packing 5G blocks, without the inefficiencies lost by unnecessary chatter between validator nodes.  Randomness and security are supervised by NuGenesis’ AI.  

Unlike all other blockchains that simply cannot store large data on-chain, NuGenesis is specifically built for data analytics in mind.  Travel videos, movies are readily stored on-chain and secured.  What this means, according to NuGenesis, is that there will be collection of NFTs interacting with each other.  From your booking, ticket, travel documents etc, all of which will inevitably be NFTs.  Most probably off-chain NFT wallets and displays offered by NuGenesis will be the central instrument, updated by the collection of NFT one accumulates over time and becomes the badge of your travel prestige as a traveller.   Loyalty rewards, discounts will be NFTs and together this composite of your standing, prestige will reflect the very social expression of who you are.  

NFTs are, at heart, about the social expression of ourselves.   NuGenesis CEO, Hussein Faraj says:

“NFT’s, particularly our interactive NFTs, will be a form of communication of who we want to represent, or values, tribal connections and relationships.”

The NFTs are the validation for real reviews.  The NFT is searchable on the explorer and will reveal the history of the reviewer and their credibility to make such a review.  

Through the interactive NFTs the entire engaging community will be instantly updated through experiences of other users and co-create the travel experience.  The Travellers will be able greater control in assessing and designing the travel experience which disintermediation produces.   We now look at certain impact on the industry in detail.

The tourism and technology

The tourism industry is increasingly considered a critical part of the economy of many nations‚ contributing to economic development‚ employment‚ and personal well-being. Tourism has been technologically-driven since the use of the Internet as a means to support all the phases of the travel process‚ from pre-trip decision making to the post-trip recollection. Dedicated travel websites and social media platforms with photographs, video and tourist ratings provide a window for potential tourists to view and evaluate the destination before making the decision to purchase their travel.

With Interactive NFTs, platforms such as accommodation-sharing application Airbnb and ride-hailing applications such as UBER will aid the growth of domestic tourism and provide greater options for foreign tourists. These platforms enhance consumer trust because they increase transparency to the end-user (e.g. the traveller). For instance, using a ride-hailing application engenders trust because of the visibility of the best possible GPS-assisted route and the predictable cost. These incentive-based platforms foster communication between stakeholders and assists in delivering valuable tourism offerings. NFTs add layers of verification to all parties concerned.

NFTs can therefore be used to unlock the different stages of the travel process‚ making it flexible‚ facilitating and simplifying both the pre-trip and on-site experience of travelers.

The value of tourism products is not only determined by the price and quality aspects‚ but it includes other factors such as functional‚ emotional and social constructs.  NFTs are perfect instruments to embrace the multiple factors to the success of the tourism industry.  Tourism packages, NuGenesis expects, to be NFTs and their publicly verifiable popularity and interactive responses through information shares will give travelers and increased sense of sense of empowerment‚ trust and ownership.

The tourism industry is intrinsically information-intensive. NuGenesis says this is primarily explained by the increasing need for more information about the travel destination. Potential travellers are not just passive recipients of services‚ they are more experienced‚ educated‚ destination-oriented and independent. More often they are contributive to the creation and formation of the travel experience. For instance‚ many tourism-related businesses and allied industries are benefiting from the role of tourists in fostering the tourism development and shaping the destination space. Moreover‚ tourists extend the host-guest settings and become integrated more than ever in the co-creation value process. To confirm this development‚ many tourism businesses put tourists in the center of the business’s thinking on strategic and innovative product design. For example‚ Expedia‚ the world’s leading online travel agency‚ launched crowdsourced deals aimed at turning travelers into ‘personal travel agents’. TripAdvisor is another company that involves its customer base for facilitating the generation of content. In doing so‚ the company has earned prominence as the most trustworthy source of traveler feedback and an indispensable tool for the pre-travel planning.

At a time of fierce competition and uncertainty‚ tourism industry stakeholders are collectively engaging in joint decision-making and resource sharing schemes. Many reasons stand behind the establishment of collaborative arrangements in tourism. Probably the most relevant one in this context is trust. Trust acts as a social lubricant necessary for forging more cooperative relationships in the tourism ecosystem. All transactions and exchanges are preconditioned and stimulated by trust. As such‚ trust acts as the cognitive premise with which potential travelers and tourism entities enter into formal interactions with each other. More specifically‚ it is based on trust that more direct information on product and service offerings can be incorporated in tourism activities to sustain brand characters‚ boost product awareness‚ and improve revenues.  

Despite technology being inextricably linked with today’s tourism, there are several challenges and limitations. The use of collaborative technology in tourism is still fraught with a number of security‚ trust‚ privacy‚ and liability issues. As innovative solutions are continually emerging and evolving‚ more modern technologies are necessary to overcome these tourism-related issues. In this regard‚ Blockchain technology has much to offer the travel industry. Blockchain could alter the course of travel experience‚ enabling more empowerment‚ autonomy‚ transparency and trust. This is discussed in the following sections.

Empowering Trust Building through Transparency 

The monopolization of tourism services and benefits exacerbates transparency problems and creates opacity. Online businesses often have economic incentives to adopt biased and opaque market mechanisms.

NuGenesis Interactive NFTs will promote trust and confidence in the online travel platforms.  NFTs, whether in the form of a ticket, loyalty program membership, Airline Travel Membership scheme or more likely, the collection of all of them on your wallet will be cryptographically secure‚ immutable‚ and updateable via a consensual agreement between all the registered parties in the network. NuGenesis Blockchain NFTs could be a means for realizing neutrality and objectivity if embedded in travel information systems. Common practices of concealing information from customers‚ especially at the pre-travel stage (e.g.‚ airlines‚ itineraries, vacancies etc.)‚ could be entirely mitigated in a searchable and verifiable NFT Blockchain-based tourism environment.

Verifying themselves through NFTs, customers could share their travel experiences more openly‚ with immutable purity and near-to-perfect integrity. Instead of being just simple reactors to the transparency of existing legacy system infrastructures‚ tourism consumers and stakeholders are the initiators and actively involved in the widely distributed transparency that NFT Blockchain embeds in the industry. Potential incremental benefits from this participatory direction are manifold. Customers would have the opportunity to better ascertain the value of the tourism product‚ to appropriately assess the travel package alternatives‚ and to successfully engage with travel companies.

Control and Power back to the NFT Traveller

There is a commercial incentive for travel companies operating in competitive environments to collectively pool resources and aggregate efforts to create market imperfections‚ thus leading to welfare loss‚ weak customer bargaining position and negative travel experiences. In the search for more control and influence over the travel experience‚ there is a real opportunity for NFT Blockchain technology to deliver an interactive and human-centric platform for potential travellers. The technology underpins both independence and decentralization.

The implications of NuGenesis interactive NFT technology would create benefits for consumers‚ allowing them to have more control and power over what and how they consume their travel experience. NuGenesis Interactive NFTs will empower them by expanding their information base and self-efficacy‚ and strengthen their digital footprint‚ thus enabling greater travel choices and decisions.

NFT technology would delegate an incremental power to the participants involved in the travel industry that adds to the control already created from the increased consumer purchasing power and the availability of more travel choices and alternatives.

NFT tech technology provides full auditability‚ a high level of tourism market discipline‚ accountability‚ and integrity is expected to prevail. More precisely‚ each party in the Blockchain-enabled tourism system is clearly defined‚ with clear lines of accountability and well defined areas of responsibility. In case something goes wrong‚ the technology will provide protection and support in litigation. The system could enhance the travellers’ experience by guaranteeing a fully immutable record of their transactional history‚ while reducing chances of mistakes or lost travel information (e.g. reservations‚ bookings‚ travel fares etc.) and decreasing the accountability layers between tourism actors. Similarly‚ NuGenesis NFT tech could solve the problem of many travel governance systems lacking the capacity to enforce tourism accountability and with no source of income to support auditability‚ recourse‚ and remediation of damage or any other expenditure. It is likely‚ therefore‚ that the technology could enable tighter control and oversight over travel arrangements‚ forcing tourism stakeholders to assume their responsibilities and accountability for harnessing the best sustainable practices in the industry.

 Disintermediation in Travel Activities

NFT tech shortens the intermediation chain and allows the omission of many actors through the resort to virtual travel agencies. There is a preference trend of consumers is moving towards the direct online interaction and connection to touristic offers.  The NFT technological paradigm perfectly aligns with this tendency.

NFT tech allows travellers to independently organise themselves and travel even if intermediaries in travel and tourism did not exist.  Unlike existing digital intermediaries and traditional travel agents which entail a centralized offer and possibilities of minimizing the search costs between the transacting parts‚ the disintermediation provided by NFT Blockchain technology could speed up transaction processing among geographically dispersed entities while eliminating the interest and surcharge that intermediaries impose on their customers.  For example‚ hotel establishments pay approximately commission of close to 20 per cent to intermediaries such as Booking.com

Securing Travel-Related Transactions

Where customers expect a full representation of modern technology and frown upon antiquated methods of payments   NFT and associated cryptocurrencies such as NuGenesis’s NuCoin would be appealing for mitigating many risks associated with the tourism settlement and payment infrastructure. In many ways Blockchain could alter the ways travellers and hospitality businesses expand money and share value. Capitalizing on the characteristics of cryptocurrencies‚ travel agents and tourists could easily and securely interchange money without the need for trusted third parties (banks). The potential benefits of doing so are many‚ including the cost savings‚ time commitment‚ and improved efficiency. Moreover‚ this fact makes the technology very suitable for the tourism industry‚ particularly in the case where financial data transmission is very sensitive and the personal information of tourists is critical and cannot be entrusted to intermediaries. For example‚ the high awareness of credit card fraud coupled with the need for security drive the thrive of cryptocurrency market in the Thai tourism industry‚ where consumers increasingly search for merchants that accept payments in Bitcoin. Similar to this case is the move undertaken by the Taiwanese airline FAT to accept certain digital currencies as payment for tickets‚ following airlines such as Latvia’s AirBaltic and Japan’s Peach Air.

NuGenesis NFT technology promotes an increased sense of travel flexibility and a more user-friendly environment. Drawing on the electronic and universal nature of cryptocurrencies‚ tourists would no longer need to convert currencies when they travel to other destinations‚ thus avoiding any potential delays‚ inefficiencies‚ and risk of foreign currencies volatility. As a result the businesses operating in tourism activity such as hotels and travel and transport agencies would be free from adjusting their service prices as a response to the pressures of exchange rate variability. Rather‚ the use of NFT Blockchain would provide a means of diversification‚ public relations strengthening and a fortified support to incapacitated tourist destinations.

Creative Loyalty Programs

NFT tech allows the leverage the rewards programs by integrating traceability‚ tradability‚ reliability‚ and convertibility capabilities into the system. For instance‚ hotels and airlines can build loyalty programmes on the NFT Blockchain platform and issue loyalty tokens as rewards to their guests.

NuGenesis has NuChain Slots, smart chains for immediate and easy issue of tokens to compliment and interact with the NFTs.  Where the enterprise is substantial, its own sovereign parallel processing blockchain can be readily implemented.

Airlines can also reward their customers with tokens as a result of their engagement with the service. An existing example is the Deskbell Chain familiarizing the participants with hotel surroundings and involving them in a reward-based co-creation process that involves the distribution and the exchange of services‚ offers and events.

Travellers could not only receive loyalty points as part of their contribution to the platform‚ but they could take advantage of these reward points by converting them (i.e.‚ into fiat)‚ buying‚ selling‚ or exchanging them with other network members.  NuGeneis NFT platform has created the rails for the development of a C2C market where exchange opportunities overlay on a wide range of loyalty programme components.

NFT tech allows for loyalty programme to maximise the traveller’s sense of freedom‚ privacy‚ autonomy and more personalized service offerings. Through NuGenesis’s focus on retaining all data on-chain and accessible through its explorer, it enhances the analytical capabilities of the travel businesses and facilitate the data collaboration techniques‚ making room for more precise and customized loyalty deals.

NFT reward systems for travel applications could enable firms to improve the goodwill of their brands and consequently strengthen the ties between travellers and destinations. 

Figure 1. Key features of Blockchain-based reward programmes

Reliable Online Travel Reviews

Studies show that online reviews are among the most important factors impacting on online hotel bookings. The majority of online review readers consider other travellers’ reviews a valuable source for up-to-date and more reliable information than provided by travel service providers. Travellers heavily depend on prior customer reviews to confirm service quality before making travel purchase decisions. These reviews constitute a new form of social communication that facilitates information sharing between review website organizers and customers as well as among consumers.

Yet Fake reviews are prolific.  The credibility of these reviews is questionable because it is difficult for users of online review platforms to detect deception and centralized systems are prone for manipulation by industry players such as hotels‚ restaurant owners‚ and consumers etc. At the same time this is complicated by the fact that everyone can write a review for a travel experience without having real evidence of undertaking tourism experience. As a result‚ the likelihood of misleading guests with their expectations is very likely and it is grueling for tourism establishments to identify and address inaccurate or unfair reviews.

NuGenesis NFTs could assure to potential travellers that online reviews are authentic‚ reliable and fair. As such‚ the technology could provide a more trustful place for online travel reviews (e.g.‚ hotels‚ restaurants‚ and lodgings etc.) than the sites controlled by online travel agencies.

NuGenesis NFTs will, it is anticipated, provide decentralized‚ trustworthy‚ unbiased and transparency review system. Once any review has been recorded in the Blockchain ledger‚ it would not be possible to make revisions or removal actions. This approach helps to thoroughly monitor the user reviews by having all their entries signed with a unique private key which confirms that a specific transaction comes from a particular user. Without compromising the privacy of online reviewers‚ Blockchain preserves the confidentiality of content creators while incentivizing all participants in the online travel review system by financial rewards in form of tokens and cryptocurrencies.

The NuGenesis ecosystem intends to use its soon to be launched, crypto-centric social media platform, Just Social to facilitate community participation.  This platform rewarding users for creating and curating reviews, not only as regards travel, but the entire cryptoverse.  The reward program encourages those that are neither motivated by extreme like or dislike to who otherwise tend to write reviews.  It is a means of providing a more balanced and majority view.

CONCLUSIONS  

The travel and tourism industry is an instrumental sector that contributes to economic development and job creation around the world. International tourism is one of the fastest growing industries amounting to more than 10% of total international trade and almost half of total trade in services‚ and can be regarded as one of the world’s largest export earners. Tourism is a key to development‚ prosperity and well-being as it fosters the creation of jobs and enterprises‚ export revenues and infrastructure development.

Online travel-related transactions exhibit greater risks than transacting in traditional environments. These emanate from the growing security loopholes and vulnerabilities that both sellers and buyers could encounter from engaging in online transactions (e.g.‚ online shopping‚ travel booking‚ settlement of insurances etc.). Potential risks involve‚ but are not limited to‚ auction fraud‚ gaming fraud‚ spamming‚ and identity theft.

The effectiveness of loyalty programs in the hospitality industry is in many cases controversial and inconclusive. Customer loyalty points are untraceable and they impose restrictions on the way to redeem them‚ leading to expired and unspent points. 

NuGenesis NFT blockchain tech is expected to generate and nurture trust by increasing transparency. For ensuring and promoting more transparent transactions in the tourism industry‚ NuGenesis NFT Blockchain technology has the capacity to provide a high level of visibility of all information throughout the travel process‚ extending from the planning to the post-trip phase. More importantly‚ the transparency enabled by by NuGenesis NFT tech could lead to a personalized co-creation which is reflected in the ability of travellers to create and openly share their travel experience with potential consumers and to interact with the environment that the destinations facilitate. The technology assists in the creation of a decentralized‚ distributed and universally accessible system which would enable travellers to express their opinions and evaluate their travel experiences with multiple travel businesses with full transparency. Moreover‚ the interactive features of the NuGenesis NFT tech and its human-centric trust model empower tourists and encourage them to get more out of their travel experience. An increased sense of tourist independency‚ transactions control and monitoring‚ and appropriate redress mechanisms could be achieved through NuGenesis NFT Tech in tourism.

Another important enabling feature of NuGenesis NFT Blockchain technology is its ability to offer more disintermediation in the tourism industry. As such‚ travellers would be more autonomous in arranging their travel plans‚ attaining cost savings‚ operational efficiency‚ and anonymous transacting. This is particularly possible through the removal of intermediaries and the complexities resulting from redundant and unnecessary tasks. In addition‚ the adoption of NFT Blockchain in the tourism offers more effective solutions to critical and serious security touchpoints in the industry. The high security inherent in NuGenesis Interactive NFT Blockchain Tech allows the risks associated with online service payments to be surmounted, like the sharing of sensitive information‚ and frauds. In order to strengthen the attachment of tourists with travel brands and destination‚ the NuGenesis NFT Blockchain-based loyalty programmes allow tourists to instantly track their reward points‚ convert them to a wide range of options‚ and exchange them for cryptocurrency. Tourism establishments might have the possibility to evolve their loyalty programmes to NFT Blockchain while simplifying the tracking of loyalty scores‚ driving more integration of various fragmented industry partners‚ featuring customized dynamic issuance or redemption.