Gate2Chain Blockchain, Tourism and the Future of the Internet Conference highlights

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Mallorca is a fantastic island off the coast of Spain, a popular destination for millions and millions of tourists every year. The island is also home to Gate2Chain, a development suite that allows businesses and individuals to connect to the BSV blockchain and harness its potential.

On December 1, 2022, Gate2Chain organized an event in Palma, consisting of a half-day conference, a networking lunch and a series of meetings in the afternoon and the next day. The Gate2Chain Blockchain, Tourism and the Future of the Internet conference was designed to educate the local tourism industry and interested parties on how blockchain technology can improve the way they do business.

Speaker Latif Ladid, president of the IPv6 Forum, described the conference as a “full house” and confirmed that there were “many experts from government, the regulator and industry, academia, research and obviously surrounded by some of the best people we have in BSV and IPv6.”

Gate2Chain’s co-founder and COO Joe Holles de Peyer was instrumental in organizing the conference, inviting key players from the island and acting as conference chair on the day.

“There is a huge tourism industry based in Mallorca, but with tentacles all over the world, and they always need innovation,” Holles de Peyer told CoinGeek.

“Tourism is an industry that works with very small margins, large, very large volume, especially on this island. There is so much Bitcoin can do for the industry. It’s massive, he said.

The first half of the conference sessions was dedicated to the “big picture” with Dr. Craig Wright as the keynote speaker, while the second half contained more simple, down-to-earth examples of clear things that blockchain is doing today that could impact the tourism industry.

“It’s an interesting region. There’s a lot of tourism in here and there’s a range of different goals between ecotourism all the way up to luxury tourism and being able to manage all those different areas and have the data for that will allow them to differentiate and create opportunities,” Dr Wright said.

Dr. Wright’s keynote focused on where BSV blockchain technology fits into the tourism industry, particularly within Mallorca. He did a fantastic job of tailoring his words to an audience new to blockchain technology, providing relevant examples that were easy to relate to.

“There are rules in Europe to control personal data, so it means keeping everything within the current regulations and also protecting your customers. So you don’t want information leaked about them, which is why it’s always important to set up systems properly,” he pointed out.

“When you store identity attributes, etc, etc, there will be opportunities to create personal information that can be shared with different places you live. All you do is you have one identity, and then all the information you want to share is transferred everywhere you go .You can share across each of the loyalty programs,” explained Dr. Wright.

“Now of course the benefit of that is just being able to, again, easily control your data. A better record keeping system would be nice too. Going even further back in years, having more information about your flights, being able to have automatic ticketing that actually works,” added he to.

Another featured speaker was Dr. Agatha Slater, Blockchain Practice Leader, Central and Eastern Europe, for IBM. She talked about some use cases for web3 and blockchain, especially for the tourism industry in Spain and where IBM fits into the picture.

“I see it as blockchain enabling a technology stack that can open up possibilities for new uses. And these ‘blockchain enablers’ as I call them are identity, tokenization, traceability and payments. And if you put all of that together, you suddenly have really cool opportunities for how you can engage with your customers,” she said.

“When we talk about these new economies, we’re still a little bit far from that playoff. But businesses, to be honest, to become relevant, to stay relevant, they need to start experiencing the space now,” Dr Slater added.

Something that made the Gate2Chain conference stand out from the rest was the focus on benefits and impact versus the technology itself. For the audience that Gate2Chain gathered for the conference and meetings, this approach was a great success.

“We tend to bury ourselves in the technology and forget what’s the benefit and what’s the impact. And the impact is more important to people, especially if you get, let’s say, governments and regulators and so on and so forth. They shies away from technology,” Ladid explained.

“So you have to show them how it will impact society and how it will impact the economy and so on. Then they become interested because they understand what’s at stake,” he added.

When it comes to the blockchain technology itself, according to Dr. Slater, it is up to the technology provider or service provider (such as IBM) to choose the right blockchain for the problems the provider wants to solve.

“We think BSV and the whole BSV ecosystem is a really good fit for businesses. Businesses care about scalability. They care about low transaction fees. BSV has that, so we’re actually very excited to talk to them about BSV when it comes to that, Dr. Slater confirmed.

Something else that made this event stand out from the rest was the location and the VIP treatment we all received. VIP speakers plus media were invited to stay in a private villa in Valldemossa, a wonderful village just outside Palma. The group was treated to five-star meals courtesy of a dedicated chef and activities such as horse riding, olive oil tasting, quad biking, shopping and touring the island.

“We’re very lucky to have hosted some famous people in this place, especially Bruno, along with Bart and Joe. And they’ve been working with this ecosystem to make it better in the future, and I think they’re doing a really good job in this place, said Ladid.

“Hosting us at their famous venue, everything that was taken care of was magic and then attracting all the stakeholders to come here and everyone is enthusiastic and wants to do something,” he said.

Holles de Peyer agreed that it was a very special experience and feels it is important to create environments like this for the magic to happen.

“It’s all the synergies and all those kinds of things that are hard to plan or quantify, all the little things that develop by just relaxing and talking. It has been very, very productive, he confirmed.

See: London Blockchain Conference 2023: Bringing government and business into the blockchain

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