About Travel Ledger

For too long travel companies have put up with sifting through hundreds of statement and invoices from suppliers – all in varying formats and wanting to be paid in different ways, meaning bank wire and foreign exchange charges. Or had to reconcile a statement with bookings made weeks ago that don’t match up. It was time to find a better way.

Travel Ledger is a billing and settlement platform run and governed by the travel industry that will highly automate the travel purchasing process along the entire distribution chain while reducing the cost to process payments for all parties.

Travel Ledger will replace the current cumbersome billing, reconciliation and settlement processes and make it fast, easy and inexpensive to transact non-airline provided travel services.

What does Travel Ledger do?

For those familiar with the travel industry, think of Travel Ledger as IATA’s BSP but for non-air travel services.

Travel Ledger provides a platform where travel agents, tour operators, accommodation wholesalers, hotel companies, car rental suppliers, cruise companies and any other travel business can access a single, shared central data repository and use it to track transactions with all their connected intermediaries and suppliers using the same unified protocol, in near real-time.

The Travel Ledger platform allows all billing records between buyers and sellers of travel products to be stored in a shared, decentralized and authenticated ledger, establishing a “single source of truth” for all parties. Furthermore, it supports settling and recording of payments in a secure and transparent manner; without the need for funds to be managed or held by a third party.

How does Travel Ledger work?

Travel Ledger is a distributed platform, created exclusively for travel professionals, and is developed on the Ethereum blockchain smart contract technology. The Travel Ledger platform uses smart contracts to transparently record transactions and manage the flow of information between existing reservation and back-office systems, as well as move funds amongst the parties when its Travel Ledger pay facility is used.

While an intuitive user portal is available for less automated businesses, an easy to integrate API/SDK is available for larger companies and can be integrated with any travel technology, thus enabling automated reconciliation and payments in a secure and transparent manner; without affecting or changing any existing booking processes.

How can Travel Ledger be used?

A shared ledger used by all companies in the travel industry allows them to share data and cost-efficiently pay each other. Travel Ledger enables a host of business processes to be fully integrated with back office and reservation systems.
A collaborative and decentralized approach ensures that Travel Ledger is run as a consortium, pursuing the interest of the wider travel industry, for example by offering lower usage fees as transaction volumes increase, define requirements and participate in the governance by submitting proposals and voting.

Commission payment to agents

The hotel PMS records the booking on Travel Ledger and the expected seller commission is calculated. The payment to the seller is processed and recorded on Travel Ledger. Agents receive all commission payments in a single transaction in one single account saving them bank and FX charges.

Supplier invoice reconciliation

The invoice or confirmation recorded in Travel Ledger at the time of booking has a single format, the back-office system automatically reads it and reconciles it.

Cost efficient B2B payment

At the time of booking, the reservation system can use the API to move funds in real time from a buyer account to a seller account at a fraction of the time and cost needed for other payment methods. When the end-to-end administration process is simplified and fully automated, everyone in the chain can focus their time and effort on selling and serving customers.

Payment reconciliation

The payment is processed and the transaction is recorded on the Travel Ledger platform. The receiving party can automatically check and reconcile the incoming payment against relevant invoice/transaction in detail.

Who controls Travel Ledger?

The Travel Ledger consortium is owned and run by the travel industry, for the travel industry.

The Travel Ledger Alliance is the governing body, composed of an advisory board of industry players, that sets the standards and controls access. Travel Ledger is “private” in the sense that only accredited travel companies will be given access. A collaborative and decentralised approach ensures that Travel Ledger is truly an “industry initiative” rather than being controlled by one side of the distribution chain, or private capital pursuing its own goals instead of the interest of the wider travel industry.

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Contact

We’re looking to hear from you if:
– you work for a travel company or in travel tech
– you are interested in being actively involved in the project or joining the Travel Ledger Alliance

Please email info@travelledger.org

We will open a Discord channel to answer all your questions after we publish the whitepaper.

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