Sounding Off: Buzzwords “metaverse” and “NFTs” may be all buzz in travel

Joseph Vito DeLuca - Kambr

"One of the benefits of building in the digital space is it is much easier to shape customized experiences."

Quote from Joseph Vito DeLuca, managing director at Kambr, in an article on PhocusWire this week on what the metaverse and NFTs mean for airline loyalty.

Each Friday, PhocusWire dissects and debates an industry trend or new development covered by PhocusWire that week.

Yes, we sounded off about the metaverse not too long ago, but the fact that we’re doing so again speaks to how rapidly the idea is taking off.

As editorial staff, we receive a lot – a whole lot – of pitches from travel and technology providers, but the influx in just the past few weeks mentioning the metaverse or NFTs has been somewhat astonishing.

We’ve written about some of these developments related to travel, such as Disney’s entry into the metaverse space as well as newly launched NFT solutions from the likes of Travala and LynKey.

But for the most part, applications of the technologies in travel are vague at best.

As DeLuca notes, the truth is these solutions are in their infancy, and, as he says, the future “is anything but clear.”

However, there’s a kernel of an idea there, and he makes a sound case for potential use cases in airline loyalty – applying NFTs to airline ticketing and transforming airline lounges into metaverse spaces.

That said, given where travel is (or is not) in its digital transformation – and accounting for a virus that is still impacting the bottom line – it’s hard to see where or why many travel providers would invest in these areas. Even harder is to see how they could build metaverse or NFT solutions at scale.

Sure, the ideas are fun to think about – and, perhaps, maybe an inevitability - but widespread adoption to some extent feels so far away it exists in the metaverse itself.

Maybe we should ask Mark Zuckerberg what he thinks.