Q&A: Why - and how - travel brands should embrace verifiable ID

Affinidi is a Singapore-based technology company founded by global investment firm Temasek in 2020. Affinidi uses decentralized technologies to enable the creation and sharing of verifiable digital credentials, empowering individuals and organizations to have control of their personal data.

Since its launch, the company’s works has been focused on solutions related to COVID health credentials. Affinidi is working in partnership with The Commons Project, and in August announced Etihad Airways as the first airline to use its Healthcare Network Assessment program.

But the potential for this technology goes far beyond the sharing and verification of vaccination and testing data. To understand more about these opportunities, PhocusWire spoke to Toby Berger, director of travel at Affinidi, who explains why he believes all stakeholders in the travel industry should embrace decentralized technologies. The conversation has been edited for brevity.

Can you begin by explaining how digital, verifiable credentials can be used in the travel journey, beyond the current application related to health data?

I think there are two pieces to it. One is how do we just make that traveler experience much more seamless, where they don't have to pull out any documents at any time. How do we combine your passport and your travel identity with, say, biometrics so that when you go through an airport, you get a facial scan and they know that this is Toby Berger, this is his passport, and he is from Canada and he's allowed entry into our country just based on the facial scan and matching that up with this digital travel document.

Then you can extend that into hotels and other experiences within the traveler ecosystem, attaching payments to it and lots of other stuff. All these verifiable credentials can then be kept in a digital wallet. That's the first piece.

The second piece is just providing a much more personalized experience. So if I like staying on high floors and away from elevators when I stay at hotels, when I go check in at a hotel for the first time, I can give them access to this wallet that I have and the hotel can know that this is what I prefer. I get a room on a high floor, away from the elevator, and that experience is better for me.

We can store my entire travel history within that wallet, so when I check into the hotel, they know how valuable I am as a customer. Then potentially, they can upgrade my experience or provide some additional benefits because they want me to come back to their hotel.

I think there are a ton of opportunities there. I think we have to solve the first piece first, which is how do we create a seamless experience, and then go into the personalization.

What are the challenges in making this vision a reality?

It requires industry, it requires technology, it requires governments. The opportunity is probably to start with a few major governments - I think of some in Europe and the U.S. - to take the lead. I think there are challenges in the markets where governments are offloading a lot of their responsibility onto airlines. There's kind of a lack of incentive for them to necessarily be involved.

But really, you need the governments and the aviation industry to come together, and technology players, and also be open to playing together. The industry needs to really come together and want to solve it as a group instead of worrying about their individual best interests.

Do you have any sense that things are moving in the right direction in relation to that?

I think everyone wants it. I think the challenge is who's going to lead it? We’re talking to all these parties that I mentioned - the governments, the technology companies, the airlines. The industry has never had to come together like this before.

So to answer your question, I do have hope. I think that the conversations are happening. Could they happen faster? Absolutely. But there are technology companies like ours and others out there that are there to support that and ensure that it's done in the right way.

Assuming these solutions do begin to develop and become more commonplace, what could be the impact on distribution and specifically the intermediaries such as the online travel agencies? Putting control of the data in the hands of the traveler could really change the dynamic, correct?

I don't think this is only about OTAs. I think any kind of organization or company that has relied on customer data for their entire business is kind of at risk. But there are opportunities for any organization. Even if you're an intermediary, you can absolutely still provide value if you embrace these technologies. There’s room for everyone in the ecosystem. I think OTAs provide a lot of value and they can continue to by providing that personalized experience.

But if any organization thinks that by locking in customer data - when other companies are allowing their customers to bring their data and have it be interoperable - if you're the only one that's not allowing that, I think that that's where the risk is for any company whether that’s an OTA or even a hotel chain. This isn't going to play out in the next couple of years. Everyone wants to solve the pandemic and make sure that the travelers are traveling again. But I think in the longer term, this idea of keeping customer data to yourself, I think there's a lot of risk that.

Do you envision that this is going to be more challenging across a certain sector of the industry?

Airlines are probably the toughest just because it's more complex and more regulated ... I think the biggest opportunity is probably in the hospitality industry. This is where your preferences and the personalization and all those things can ... have a bigger impact on the travel experience.

Also I think there's a significant opportunity for the smaller players, whether they be a smaller or independent hotel or smaller tour operators to have a big impact here. Because this is where data ownership isn't as critical and needed to build a business, so then not having data isn’t a hindrance anymore. They haven't ever been as reliant on it. [Whereas] a lot of the large travel companies, whether they are OTAs or airlines or hotel chains, they've got massive teams that are trying to create these personalized experiences or making sure their targeting is right with their advertising.

Can you give us an example of how this could play out for let’s say smaller, independent tour and activity providers?

What if the customer can take their data and ... upload it to a website, and the websites can plan the perfect trip and work with these mom-and-pop tour operators in whatever country. For example, we have technology that enables a fully decentralized, almost like a database, and we have all of our [health] clinics that we can verify on this decentralized database.

We could do the same in travel industry where you have all of these experience providers in it, and as a traveler I come to this decentralized database of experiences and plug in my preferences [from my digital wallet] and suddenly I get a list of opportunities or experiences that match up with what I’m looking for.

That’s coming, and it’s a question of whether you embrace these decentralized organizations. This could also be an opportunity for an OTA, but the OTA has to enable the customer then to take whatever data they've done on their website or within their organization and move it to another one. It can't just be a one-way exchange.

What should travel brands be doing today to prepare for the coming age of decentralized technology and verifiable credentials? If you were working for an airline or a hotel company, what would you be doing to prepare for this?

I think you have to embrace the idea that being a walled garden is not going to help you in the long run. I think first, you have to think about what does it mean if our customers are able to take their travel history out of our platform? Think about framing it like that and then start figuring out how do we play within a broader ecosystem? What does it mean if hotels and airlines and other further downstream operators can exchange that type of information - what does it mean for the traveler? And how do we then create those seamless experiences so that travelers can move between these operators, and operators can then better serve them? But I think they first need to get [rid of] this idea that the data is theirs and the customer is theirs. Because right now most of businesses think that they own the customer.

Then it is to start doing small tasks. Partner with a technology company like ours or other ones that have these new wallets. And say hey Mr. Traveler, once you upload your preferences into it and then you come and stay at our hotels and you unlock those preferences, we're going to give you a more personalized experience, or we'll give you an upgrade or something. These are small tests that they could do to understand the impact on the business.

To wrap up, what’s your outlook for the future? Where will we be in five years?

The pandemic is accelerating this. The whole idea of digital, verifiable credentials was fairly nascent prior to the pandemic. People were talking, but it was this fringe group. Now it’s front and center. Right now it’s primarily to solve the vaccine and test stuff. But we’re already starting to see the seamless part of the travel experience in motion, airports doing biometrics and all that ... hotels doing seamless check-out. I think the personalization is the next phase.

In five years I can definitely see, assuming we’re not in the same state with the pandemic and new variants, a lot more movement in terms of people having digital wallets for credentials, travel history, loyalty.

Decentralization and interoperability isn’t exclusive to operators. That’s important to note. Anyone within an industry that provides value to customers and are willing to play, there are opportunities.