Fitrina Krimeta: Review GOeureka Part 5 - Hotel loyalty programmes

What is GOeureka?

GOeureka is a travel tech company utilising blockchain technology to build a hotel booking platform. Our mission is to decentralise the hotel booking sector and deliver greater transparency by allowing hotels to directly connect with their customers. As a technology partner to hotels, GO aims to provide a dynamic digital experience to users and eradicate the high commission structures imposed by online travel agents. By reducing the financial commitments of hotels to third-party booking platforms, GO’s vision is to enable hotels to focus more resources on providing better intrinsic value and services to travellers around the globe.

Loyalty Programmes

Hotel loyalty programmes will be integrated into the GOeureka platform, where travellers may earn loyalty points from the hotels they have booked. Necessary APIs will be provided for hotels to link their loyalty database with GOeureka. This will help facilitate the interoperable loyalty points detailed in GOeureka’s official whitepaper. GOeureka will send and retrieve data from the hotel’s database to provide real-time updates for users to track their points and for hotels to track points that users have redeemed with GOeureka. Research shows that 70% of customers do not sign up for a loyalty programme due to inconvenience and time costs associated with registering for a programme . With GOeureka, 1 registration for a loyalty programme is processed and verified in the backend. Customers will only be required to fill up an online registration form or, if they are already registered loyalty members, they only need to provide their pre-registered details (e.g. member ID) and the platform will link and display their loyalty details.

Services Dashboard & CMS

Hotels will have access to a services dashboard and content management system (CMS) that interacts with GOeureka’s mobile application. Hotels are able to list services that they provide and directly communicate with guests during their stay. Hotels may subscribe to the following services:

Ø Housekeeping

Ø Concierge services

Ø Live chat

Ø Room service

Ø Events

In-app notifications will alert hotels when guests require a particular service. Hotels may update information and ongoing events in the vicinity, as well as their room service menu via the CMS.

Mobile Application Platform

The mobile application platform will act as an extension of the web application, with the same consumer-related functions. Additional mobile app functions are detailed below.

Check-in & Check-out

As consumer data will be shared between GOeureka and hotels, the consumers will have a seamless check-in experience during their stay. Upon registration, GOeureka collects personal identifiable information, which will be encrypted and stored off-chain. This information will be used to facilitate the check-in process since users are already authenticated on the GOeureka platform. Unique identifiers will be matched with data from the hotel’s central reservation system and consumers are able to check-in directly on the mobile app. The check-in experience will consist of 3 simple steps:

1. Select booking (reservation for the day)

2. Fill up optional information (hotels may request additional information to cater and personalize the consumers stay – e.g. Room upgrade, Types of pillow)

3. Check-in to room

Check-in requests will be automatically approved as long as certain prerequisites like the check-in time or booking deposit are fulfilled.

Guests may check-out of their stay through a similar process, but will be redirected to the payment page, where they may choose from GOeureka’s various payment methods to settle their vacation bill:

1. Check-out of stay

2. Fill up check-out form (hotels may ask if guests have minibar consumption, guests may approve additional charges from in-room dining, etc.)

3. Redirect to payment page

Hotel Services

Upon check-in, authentication tokens will be sent to GOeureka’s hotel CMS and guests will be matchmade with the hotel they have checked into once tokens are authenticated in the backend. Hotels and guests will have direct access to each other and will be able to communicate for the duration of the stay. Guests will be entitled to the aforementioned hotel services, depending on what hotels make available.

Room Key

To provide full self-service capabilities, GOeureka will also provide a room key feature on the mobile app. The availability of the mobile room key depends on the hotel’s physical infrastructure, but hotels with smart locks or keypad locks will have the room key feature integrated on GOeureka’s app.

GOeureka will integrate available developer APIs by major smart lock providers. This technology makes use of encrypted Bluetooth technology, where authenticated data is sent from the GOeureka app through the guest’s mobile device to the smart lock network which then unlocks a guest’s room. Bluetooth technology is found to be a safer alternative due to encryption and authentication methods available for Bluetooth transmission as opposed to Wi-Fi protocols that are easily spied on by other users on the same Wi-Fi network.