The Online Travel Industry (OTA) has seen tremendous growth over the last decade. Whether it is convenience, comparison or cost, in 2017 US based OTA’s won 52% market share of which hotel bookings is a considerable part. In Europe the number is closer to 70%, meaning 70% of all European originated travel is booked via an OTA.
OTA’s, as an industry, have successfully dis-intermediated the hotelier from a direct booking relationship with their customer. This disassociation by degree has seen a change in the customer’s user habit and perspective of value. This distortion of perspective and fact, ensures the hoteliers job of defining and building a unique customer relationship with their customer is exceedingly difficult as excellence is experience is associated to the OTA, as the originator of the service offer.
The OTA’s business model has now become definitive of the industry they set out, two decades ago, to digitise and simplify. With over two decades of industry domination many OTA’s now feel a sense of entitlement. This entitlement is born of customer defining user habits, one button aggregation and easy to navigate customer interfaces. Built of an architecture of centralised control and cloaked intent the OTA customer is generally unaware of this Jekyll in Hyde’s clothing. Within the industry many battle with the dichotomy of the necessity of aggregation as a service with what lurks beneath and what that means to fair reimbursement, censorship and siloed profits, for the few.
What will a Coze internal token economy look like?
The Coze business plan is to support a global offer to intermediate all hotel bookings globally, for zero cost. The Coze team believe there is a strong user case to have a token of value to represent the hotel bookings process, and all it entails, across sovereign, geographical, and political boundaries and around complicated, costly and non-competitively priced global exchange fiat currencies. The Hotel Bookings infrastructure, on the BlockChain, makes the same good sense regardless if you are hoteling in London, Paris, Istanbul or Vientiane.
This intermediation, via a Platform as a Service (PaaS), will reconnect the hotel service provider with their customer. This simple but critical customer connection has been lost to the online travel agency (OTA) industry over the past two decades. A recognition of the growing value of customer data, together with BlockChain technology and a architecture of inclusivity, democratisation, belonging and community empowerment describe a service offering where the Hotel industry takes control of their own domain and wrestle, from the collective OTA’s, a value conservatively priced today at 24 Billion USD and 34 Billion by 2021. This represents Billion of USD leaking from the hotel industry, akin to matrimony payments to a familiar but divorced partner. Wouldn’t it be great to see the potential of the industry, held within the industry, for the benefit of customers, hoteliers and all those others who participate in the value generating process?
The Coze model for sustainability and growth – mobility, value and convenience
Sound economic theory describes an increase in one economic activity may cause an increase to many other related economic activities. This is especially true in respect of a platform architecture. There are many ways this growth in the platform economy can be envisaged. Critical to the Coze value proposition will be the Coze mobile application, supporting both Android and iPhone devices. It is envisaged a number of collaborative services will be born of the mobile device and the Coze Platform architecture. The mobile device represents social connections, network connectivity, and convenience, today and with the Coze application on your favourite mobile device, it will also soon carry your local currency, defined by the SVN token, on your finger-tips and at your control. Further, the Coze mobile application and wallet places a world of opportunities at the feet of the Hotelier, this opportunity can be acted on locally or developed and grown globally. Being born of a Platform architecture, the mobile application will be looking to support a number of attractive growth strategies seeing the Coze application become the white label for all Hoteliers who want to engage directly with their customer and be in control of the their offer and incentives.
Defining a utility token for ecosystem management, security and transparency
An example, as it relates to the increasing demand for the SVN token, is an increase in interest and sales of Hotel rooms leading to an increase in demand for complimentary services provided by participating ecosystem 3rd party service providers. The improvement in room sales leads to greater interest of non-participating hotel ecosystem providers in joining the ecosystem. This growth in participation of the platform ecosystem provides a richer ecosystem leading to a better hotel stay for customers resulting in a greater and growing user-case and utility, internally and externally, for the SVN token within. A greater utility value in the SVN token means a great redistribution of value to customers, participants and community alike. The democratised value model, through a platform as a service architecture ensures value is distributed horizontally, not siloed and stored vertically as described by the leading OTA business models.
In concert with the above, the improved platform function and fit, together with growing opportunities for new revenue models, brings more 3rd party interest to the platform, thus platform development and service offer is improved exponentially, in both breath and scope. By Coze offering the hotelier an opportunity the wrestle control of the customer back with them, they can leverage their value proposition, offering a great hotel experience for their guests while Coze enables an infrastructure of sharing, inclusion, empowerment and value add for all who collaborate in the ecosystem. This speaks to a single example only, there are many more!
Wallet Development a key milestone for Coze Platform service
Online service adoption, with the use of a platform architecture, arguably is more challenging at the early stages of service release. The early platform service release has more moving parts, a little immature perhaps in feel and fit, however with active community participation and an eye to detail these first tentative steps are soon strong and steady. When a Platform as a Service, service is successfully executed its opportunity potential is initially far greater than a Software as a Service pipeline platform model. This potential continues to appreciate exponentially with ongoing development and strategic alliances and collaborations. Uptake, traction and later adoption means ensuring the digital tools are developed for the easy ‘onramp’ of contributors, collaborators and community for the learning, investigation of fit and then service use and adoption to take place.
Ongoing platform development critically requires an open, interactive and secure digital wallet. Wallet development will encourage, enable and embolden easy SVN token acquirement and use for its prescribed purposes within the Coze platform and ecosystem. The Coze team recognizes, for platform success and growth, the platform must provide no barriers to Coze service access, use and storage. Service success will partly depend on how easy it is to use the SVN token within the Coze wallet, Coze platform and larger Coze ecosystem.
As the Coze platform token economics grow, via inputs and outflows to internal services, collaborators, customers and community members, the velocity of the SVN token, within the Coze ecosystem will also grow. Third party service providers and collaborators will be encouraged, enabled and empowered to enlarge their own economic activity by the use of Coze’s digital services platform and the tools within. Inside the platform the SVN token will functions as a mechanism for commerce as well as enabling the typical store of value and currency role, necessary in any store and exchange of value. Seeing the SVN token used to enable ‘Coze services access and use’ is a step forward in ensuring the Coze service to available to everyone, without any technological barrier.
It is envisaged the Coze Team will engage in ongoing promotional activities, within the Hotel Industry and elsewhere, with the focus of extending the global footprint of relevance together with growing and extending the service offer for customers, collaborators and community alike. The Coze Team will be sharing more detail with us all, in respect to their Platform as a Service plans. I certainly look forward sharing more detail then.
Conclusion
The Coze story is just beginning. The mission is clear and goal clearly defined. Coze ICO participates and supporters can witness a resetting of the scales of equity and fairness seeing hotel dollars spent inside the industry where it was intended.
The inclusion of an internal wallet service, in support of an internal exchange, will be supported by a number of initiatives designed to support the expanding Coze platform business. Growth will be both organic and inorganic, internal and external to, the Coze domain. Growth of service demand and platform utility demand will be manifested through, and via the Coze utility token.
The Coze BlockChain approach, to solve the problem of intermediating aggregators charging excessive commissions and fees, is set to democratise the Hotel booking industry for a zero cost, seeing a redistribution of the growing value opportunity, by directly empowering the Hoteliers to define their own customer relationship and by sharing, with equity and fairness, the new looking industry with those intent on seeing a fairer redistribution of value for everyone. The alternative, remaining with the status quo, sees the fox remain in possession of the keys to the Hen House.
Disclaimer
I am an experienced Senior Manager, Innovator and SaaS Entrepreneur, a BlockChain technology evangelist and enthusiast. I am proudly a SaaS/BlockChain adviser and contributor to the Coze Team. Please see my LinkedIn Profile here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-reid-03503012
Reference:
https://coze.io