Lufthansa Partners With a Blockchain Provider in an Investment Worth Testing
Photo Credit: Economy class seating in one of Lufthansa's A380s. The airline group is partnering with a blockchain technology start-up to explore new ways of selling travel content. Lufthansa Group / Rolf Bewersdorf Gregor Schlaeger
Skift Take
It is easy to see why Lufthansa, which sells flights and ancillary services, would be interested in blockchain. Airlines, hotels and tour operators might be able to use blockchain to dramatically reduce their distribution costs. At this stage, it is hard to tell how close this is to being a reality, and how fearful online travel agents and others should be.
Lufthansa Group has become the first major aviation company to partner with a blockchain provider, in a move it hopes will transform how travel products are sold.
The idea that blockchain technology might one day revolutionize the travel industry has gained traction over the last year or two, but it remains very much in the experimental stage.
What Lufthansa’s new partnership does is show how airlines and hotels might use the technology in the future to drastically reduce distribution costs. And although Lufthansa joins Air France-KLM in exploring what blockchain can do, Lufthansa has gone the furthest among airlines through its new agreement with Switzerland-based start-up Winding Tree.
At this stage, Lufthansa has simply agreed to participate in the pre-sale of of Winding Tree’s crypt
