Over the past few years, bitcoin and blockchain are two words that nearly all of us have had to add to our vocabulary.

Today, blockchain technology is already in use across several sectors, but is it also going to disrupt the travel industry? While Bitcoin is expected to reach new heights in the future and blockchain technology starts changing certain aspects of the economy, the travel industry is undergoing one of its biggest-ever transformations.

In order to get some insights, we set-up a joint interview with investor Jan-Frederik Valentin and founder Florian Montag, taking a look at how blockchain can impact the travel and hospitality industry over the next year. Jan Valentin is already involved in tourism and blockchain scale-ups (Solana, HomeToGo) and is General Partner of ennea capital partners, an early-stage VC firm focusing on travel and mobility. Florian Montag, as the Co-founder of Hotelhero and Apaleo, is familiar with the latest technical developments in travel tech.

Jan, what are the key challenges that you’ve seen in the travel industry over the past couple of years?

Well, obviously the pandemic slowed down startup growth and at the same time has kept old companies alive through state subsidies. A few of them might not exist anymore if not for the subsidies. Secondly, GAFA and the extraction of profits from the ecosystem, notably by Google and Facebook have been a challenge for travel companies. Furthermore, the slow adaptation of the public sector to badly needed technological advancements, which, in turn, slow down the success of startups, especially of mobility B2B companies.

Jan , you are also involved with the traveltech scale-up HomeToGo. Can you tell us a bit more about this company?

HomeToGo built an incredibly strong team with a vision to tackle a hugely complex whilst underrated challenge, solving the fragmented alternative accommodation industry. They’ve managed to bring together a very diverse supply across thousands of points of sale and providers, empowering the industry with technology solutions to fuel growth. To see how far they have come since their founding in 2014 is impressive. They drastically accelerated throughout the pandemic and saw record growth last year, especially with their onsite business – where the complete transaction from discovery to booking to payment happens on their domains. In my opinion, they have effectively evolved to be an Airbnb competitor in Europe. Being the first European tech SPAC IPO is a huge achievement, possibly bigger than in flights (KAYAK) or hotels (Trivago). If HomeToGo can evolve from a full-stack holiday homes aggregator to the world’s largest marketplace for alternative accommodation, and on its way to becoming a SaaS-enabled operating system, decacorn status is possible in my opinion. A true tech champion for Europe.

Read the full article at eu-startups.com