Russia is going to launch blockchain empowered tourism in Khanty-Mansi, as reported by media outlet Tass on 7th June. Khanty-Mansi is located in the western part of Siberia. The place has a historical appeal and has its importance in tourism.
The report surfaced after the transnational Economic Forum held in St. Petersburg. An agreement was signed between Roman Genkel, the regional director of the development fund, and Alexander Borodich, the chief executive of Universal, the blockchain startup that will be launching the platform.
The platform that will be developed by Universal will track spending and investment of the general public to ensure transparency. The company has said through its blog on 7th June that they will help to eliminate the misuse of government funds and grants.
Previously it was indicated by Oleg Safonov, chief of Federal Agency of Russian Tourism that blockchain expertise will renovate the entire tourism market of Russia. As per him, the tourism business is on the edge of change, and the emerging technologies will eliminate the necessity of mediators. It will help the tourist to contact the service providers directly.
He also told that it would make the quality of the product better and side by side it will be less expensive.
The aforementioned platform will be powered to support many languages to help the participants in the tourism ecosystem. The platform will help the tourism facility providers like caterers, accommodations, transportation, and the tourist himself.
In short, the platform will be designed to promote specific pain points of tourism in the region, including tourist routes, hospitality, and facilities. They will be creating a pool of data from that they will analyze the problem areas and ways to promote the tourist flow.
It seems the government of Russia has a favorable outlook towards the blockchain technology. The largest tourism company of the country TIU Group had planned to implement blockchain in its property management system last year.
Last year Dubai had also proposed to launch their B2B platform specifically for tourism. They had planned to use blockchain in the platform. The proposed platform is their 10X initiative to be ten years in advance of other cities of the world.
Rosneft, the Russian state-run oil corporation, has expressed their thoughts to accept cryptocurrency as a payment option in the Economic Forum in the coming days.
