Traveller ID Ecosystem

[IMPACT]

a. More about the problem

Government and travel-related solutions (travel websites, tour operators, booking engines, hotel property management systems, review systems, CRM, loyalty systems) are spending enormous efforts to capture traveller information and at different stages of the journey.

This information is used by the systems to give the traveller the best experience but also for compliance with authorities.

The traveller has to share the same information multiple times which is time consuming, he/she does not have any control over their personal data and how it is being saved and treated.

Service providers such as hotels need to integrate this content from various sources and invest heavily in integration systems and CRMs. This creates an additional risk for service providers from not “owning” the customer experience and not being able to assure the privacy and security of their customer data.

b. The solution

Create a Traveller Identity Ecosystem wherein:

• Travellers control and manage their identity to fulfil transactions such as booking, check-in and payment. Never re-enter the same details twice, always know what data you are sharing with whom, and benefit from tailored services.
• Hotels offer a seamless and privacy-preserving customer experience while reducing technology and transaction costs by establishing efficiency of information management and a peer-to-peer connection to the traveller.

The solution has the potential to achieve a completely new form of handling traveller information within the hospitality industry.

The solution is enabled by the combination of technologies from Atala PRISM, ProofSpace and eRevMax.

• Atala PRISM is being integrated into the ProofSpace no code decentralized ID platform as part of a Fund 7 proposal entitled No-Code SSI SaaS for mass adoption (see https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/385204). 
• The ProofSpace platform can be used to define the credentials, service profiles and service interactions (collectively “the workflow”) for travel services and travellers, who can use the ProofSpace Dash and ProofSpace App respectively as their user interface.
• The ProofSpace platform has existing integrations with ID verification and KYC providers for a higher level of identity assurance.
• Integration with the travel services and industry platforms can be achieved using eRevMax extensive integration infrastructure.

The combination of these technologies and the project team’s existing large hospitality network and customer base gives this proposal a high chance of success and scale.

We will begin by creating an MVP focused on a narrow and needed solution for travellers and hotels: integration of decentralised ID interactions into a hotel booking engine, enabling one-click form filling and efficient booking completion. 

We will pilot this MVP with the eRevMax booking engine and selected hotel customers.

The impact of this pilot will be proving the integration of reusable decentralised ID within a hotel booking engine technology and the technology cycle from traveller ID creation to booking confirmation. This model could create a standard for other booking engines and the first step for integration to other systems such as hotel property management systems, guest relationship management systems, automatic room keys and many more. 

b.1. Solution For Travelers

In the big picture a traveller identity will be structured as a multi-layer credential to allow for fulfilment of a range of possible transactions. Travellers can use the ProofSpace App, enabled with Atala PRISM credentials, to manage their credentials and complete interactions with third-party services.

• Official identity - passport and/or national ID information.
• Health - allergies, disability and access requirements, smoking preferences, COVID-19 vaccination/test status.
• Demographics - age, sex, gender pronoun preferences, marriage status, children, occupation.
• Travel preferences - seat location, floor preference, trip type (vacation, business), nutritional.

A traveller will be invited to share different parts of this information at different stages in their journey by different service providers (airline, airport, hotel) to achieve different goals (complete booking, enter lounge, check-in to hotel, pay hotel bill). This is enabled by a capability, available in the ProofSpace platform, called selective disclosure and zero-knowledge predicates.

Travellers will actively provide their consent for the data sharing and complete the transaction with a single button on their phone.

Each time they reuse their multi-layer decentralised ID, they save time, claim greater control of their privacy and expand their personalised Traveller Identity Ecosystem - a network of services that aggregate around them and their preferences.

b.2. Solution For Hospitality Services

In our vision, this information will be connected to all the systems related to the stay at the hotel and later on also to other services the traveller meets in his journey.

In the future, we can relate and connect to other services in the Cardano ecosystem such as wallets or travel NFTs and enable ada payments for participating service providers.

Hospitality services will provide a range of possible interactions for travel customers where the data they request is limited to what is needed to complete the transaction, and made transparent to the traveller. The travel services can use ProofSpace to configure these interactions for their customers to complete via the services’ customised profile in the ProofSpace App. They can leverage the eRevMax and ProofSpace APIs to integrate the data flows, including issuing and verification of Atala PRISM credentials, into their existing systems.

Some possible interactions include enabling the traveller to:

• Make a booking
• Acquire, store and use loyalty points
• Use hotel service such as SPA and restaurant 
• Use a verifiable credential as a digital room key
• Check in to a lounge

Through these interactions several internal goals can be achieved by the hotel:

• Identity verification and KYC
• Document verification
• Payment verification
• Data privacy and consent management
• Customer identity access management (online or offline)
• SSI OAuth
• Fraud prevention
• Regulatory compliance transaction monitoring

Each time the traveller uses their reusable traveller ID, the travel service provides them a better customer experience while creating a direct connection with the traveller for their future travel needs.

b.3. For the Cardano community

This proposal unlocks the potential for Atala PRISM credentials to become the dominant credential format used in the travel sector. Reusable ID for international travel represents a current market opportunity of $1bn, expected to expand to $4.82b by 2026.

c. Our MVP (and the focus of this proposal)

In our MVP the traveller will create the following credentials:

• Official identity - passport and/or national ID information.
• Demographics - age, sex, gender pronoun preferences, marriage status, children, occupation.
• Travel preferences - seat location, floor preference, trip type (vacation, business), nutritional.

And they will use these credentials to interact with a booking engine and hotels in order to complete a booking and receive a booking confirmation.

The approximate workflow is as follows:

1. User reaches the moment of booking on the online booking engine.
2. User scans a QR code on booking engine to trigger SSI interaction
3. User receives and accepts consent request in ProofSpace App to share verifiable identity, demographic and payment information with the booking engine.
4. Booking engine receives and processes booking request.
5. User receives booking confirmation as verifiable credential (VC).
6. Hotel receives order details from booking engine.
7. User can share booking confirmation VC with hotel on arrival to complete check-in.

Future stages:

1. Increase the number of onward interactions that are possible for the user inside the hotel.
2. Increase the number of participating hotels, travel agencies and third-party systems.

d. Business Model

Once the model is established and more hotels will start adapting the solution, hotels will pay a licence fee (monthly or annual) which is a common model for technology services in the hospitality industry.

Success in this challenge relates to: "How can we take the next step to support the principles of self-sovereign identity" 

• The suggested proposal will deliver a PoC of a specific use case that is typical for the hospitality industry and that could be replicated into a potential $4.8b market. The team has the experience and network to scale such a solution and integrate it with B2B relevant systems. If successful, this use case would drive significant usage of PRISM credentials in the hospitality industry. The lessons and insights gathered through this proposal would offer a set of principles for how SSI can be effectively introduced to this vertical.

The proposal addresses several desired focus area of the challenge:

• Participation and adoption growth: adoption of PRISM credentials in hospitality industry would be groundbreaking and provide a route to significant adoption growth for high-volume credentials.
• Portability: a major part of the proposal is about giving people a set of portable “Traveller ID” credentials which they can carry around with them and use to complete travel related transactions and requirements.
• Usability and accessibility: We are starting with a narrow, well-defined use case which will be easy for people to navigate. As we scale, the no-code tooling from ProofSpace’s SaaS platform will enable any hospitality, agency or operator to sign up and start leveraging PRISM credentials and interacting with customers.
• Interoperability: The ProofSpace wallet already contains Indy credentials and their implementation of PRISM would enable hospitality enterprises already using Indy credentials in Indy networks to be included in PRISM trust networks as well.
• Business models: this project will eventually align its business model to the familiar models in hospitality - monthly or annual subscriptions. In the future, new business models may arise from using verifiable credentials - for example where partners or related services form affiliate marketing networks and enable referral compensation and loyalty programmes for customers using services within those networks

The proposal aligns with a key metric in this challenge:

• The number of proposals that directly address SSI in a quantifiable manner:  this will result in a production launch of the eRevMax booking engine utilising PRISM credentials to process hotel bookings. Downstream, each hotel will be able to utilise ProofSpace no-code tooling to complete hotel check-in, room entry and billing processes using PRISM credentials, potentially resulting in 100s of new production instances for PRISM, and 1000s of new credentials being issued/verified. These numbers will only increase as more hotels, agencies, operators and travellers join the service.

• Travel industry resistance from major players that might perceive it as a challenge. eRevMax has the technology infrastructure and personal relationships to initiate collaboration and co-design with key stakeholders.

• Security and assurance of traveller data is a top priority but also a challenge. eRevMax has a lot of experience in mitigating this area

• Potential government regulation related to privacy and handling of official documents

[FEASIBILITY]

Tasks

1. Design and finalise the booking workflow
2. Onboard hotel pilot partners
3. Support Booking Engine and Hotels to implement workflow in and integrate with ProofSpace Dash/App
4. Run acceptance testing with key stakeholders and dummy data
5. Deploy workflow to production
6. Market and trial the solution with pilot hotel partners and booking engine customers

Deliverables & Milestones

April/May

• Receive funds
• Publish finalised booking workflow
• Confirm onboarded hotel partners

June

• Confirm any further onboarded hotel partners
• Integrations and set up underway

July

• Publish a video of the functioning workflow with dummy data
• Push to production

August

• First customers go through full workflow

Based on eRevMax integration experience we estimate the following budget needed for phase one of the project according to the planned tasks and deliverables. We prefer this budget structure as it informs readers what results the treasury funds will be paying for.

The total budget is $37,304. Our budget follows the following format:

Task/Deliverable

• $Cost

BUDGET

Design and finalise the booking workflow

• $10,328

Onboard hotel pilot partners

• $6,260

Support Booking Engine and Hotels to implement workflow in and integrate with ProofSpace Dash/App

• $8,520

Run acceptance testing with key stakeholders and dummy data

• $5,808

Deploy workflow to production

• $3,808

Market and trial the solution with pilot hotel partners and booking engine customers

• $2,580

TOTAL

• $37,304

eRevMax is a leading travel B2B integration technology company, founded over 20 years ago and was a leading innovator in many of the industry state of the art solutions such as rate shopping tools and channel managers. The company had over 1000 technology integrations (i.e. travel websites, booking engines, property management systems) and is being used by hotels across the globe. For more info visit https://www.eRevMax.com or view the following link

https://www.erevmax.com/resources-download/RateTiger-CRS-BI-Flyer.pdf

• Udai Solanki, travel industry technology expert, Founder eRevMax.com 20 years ago, served as CTO and since last two years as CEO https://www.linkedin.com/in/solanki
• eRevMax technology team, mostly based in India, including Cotland and Java developers (related to Atala Prism software)

ProofSpace is a no code platform for issuing and verifying reusable identity credentials, with a track record in the US health system, international development and e-government. The key members of the ProofSpace team supporting this proposal include:

• Viktor Radchenko - CTO and mobile dev for ProofSpace. 20-year R&D track record. Skilled in project and product management, solution architecture, science consulting, blockchain, mobile, web, game, and embedded development. 6 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
• Ruslan Shevchenko, PhD - Solution Architect and BE for ProofSpace. Skilled architect and scientific researcher with 30-years’ experience across blockchain, telecom, advertising and financial services. Researcher in the Institute of Software Systems and Founder of several successful ventures including NBI (an Internet Provider), GradSoft (a software development firm) and UA Scala user group. 10 publications in peer-reviewed journals, co-authored book entitled “Methods of Algebraic Programming” and is an active columnist for the Ukrainian developers' community portal.
• Nick Mason - CEO for ProofSpace. Experienced social entrepreneur and venture analyst with a proven track record of social venture funding and of starting and growing ventures in Europe and Africa. Background as Consultant venture analyst at Toniic, Head of Portfolio and Operations at BeyondMe, UK Director for Sierra Leone based education charity and Trustee for Street Child. Co-Founded ProofSpace (formerly ZAKA in 2019).

Yoram Ben Zvi, an industry expert with 20 years of experience in the travel technology and leisure industry as an entrepreneur as well as COO at eRevMax. https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoram-ben-zvi-446836/. Yoram is also active catalyst community member as CA, successful proposal, and active in Cardano4Climate community

[AUDITABILITY]

The following milestones will be shared with the Catalyst community through the monthly Catalyst reports and the end of project report.

• Publish finalised booking workflow
• Confirm onboarded hotel partners
• Confirm any further onboarded hotel partners
• Integrations and set up underway
• Publish a video of the functioning workflow with dummy data
• Push to production
• First customers go through full workflow successfully (can include stakeholder attestations and feedback)

The key measure of success for the project is the number of travellers completing bookings with PRISM credentials and the number of participating hotels. Possible success metrics include:

• Growth of Traveller ID credentials: Month-on-Month (M-o-M) growth of bookings made using Traveller ID credentials
• Popularity of Traveller ID versus traditional way: Month-on-Month comparison of the total number of bookings through the booking engine, versus the number that were made using Traveller ID
• Growth in Traveller ID Ecosystem: Month-on-Month growth in number of hospitality service providers accepting Traveller ID credentials

ProofSpace is integrating Atala PRISM credentials into its platform through its F7 proposal (see https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/385204))

SDG Rating

SDG goals:

• Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

SDG subgoals:

• 9.1 Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all