Explore how the Camino Messenger revolutionizes travel distribution by addressing high Look-to-Book ratios, reducing costs by up to 90% compared to traditional systems, and creating new revenue streams for travel suppliers.
Did you know that in travel distribution, only 1 out of thousands of searches convert into actual bookings, leaving businesses with massive operational costs?
Look-to-Book (LTB) ratios in the travel industry reflect the number of searches required to secure a single booking. Basically, the equivalent to the "conversion rate". Today, with new digital solutions (AI, chat bots and others), this ratio is getting worse by the day. For both suppliers and agencies, the rising costs are becoming unsustainable.
As long as searches are free, this trend cannot be reversed. There are ways not only to optimize searches to make travel planning more efficient, but also to directly monetize such calls. In this article you will learn about the way the Camino Messenger changes travel distribution drastically reducing the costs (up to 90% in comparison with aggregators or GDSs), but also opens new revenue streams for travel products suppliers, to compensate for processing costs.
It is clear that every travel search costs money, but only a small fraction of them convert into bookings. Who pays for the rest? Such an imbalance hits both sides hard: suppliers waste marketing budgets on numerous enquiries and suffer from processing unnecessary responses, while suppliers incur operational costs on searches that rarely generate revenue.
The channels like Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and travel aggregators harden the problem even more with steep fees up to $16 per ticket or 25% of every booked ticket prices, monthly license fees and even LTB penalties from aggregators, turning high search volumes into a financial liability.
The Camino Messenger is the first travel distribution platform solving the high LTB ratios thanks to its architecture and digital capabilities. Designed specifically for the travel industry and built by travel tech experts, it introduces a new perspective on how searches and bookings are managed. In short, using the messenger travel suppliers and providers can align incentives and cut digital waste.
Built on decentralized, open-source technologies, the Camino Messenger drives the travel industry participants into a community state of mind where all the participants own and govern the technology they use. Thus, there is no single entity controlling the system — all the participants have trust through its accessible and adaptable framework.
Since it is a complex solution on both technical and business levels, we will focus on the main differences between traditional travel distribution and travel distribution on the Camino Messenger.
Before we get to the fees, let's define "messages" in the context of travel distribution with the Camino Messenger. "A message" is a unified and formalized API call with standardized structure, which makes the entire process of data exchange super efficient and clear to all the participants of the network and across verticals. We say, that all the companies connected to the Messenger "speak the same language".
Today, the charge per message is fixed and equals 0.00005 EURe. EURe is the digital equivalent of a Euro (stablecoin) used to transact in the digital ecosystem. Camino Messenger provides a simplified way for companies willing to work with the Messenger to use the best of both worlds, from digital currencies to classic bank account transfers.
These fees are collected via automated cheques (no manual handling). 70% of it goes to server operators and 30% to Chain4Travel for ongoing development.
Travel product suppliers can set flexible fees (for example 0.0001 EURe per message) to either recover search-related costs on the messenger or create new revenue streams by monetizing high search volumes. In the second scenario the digital infrastructure of the Messenger enables suppliers to turn messages (searches) into profitable assets. These fees, collected via automated cheques, are split 70% to suppliers and 30% to Chain4Travel for further development of the Camino Messenger.
In other words, if you as a metasearcher sending 1,000,000 searches to an airline, the airline could set a 0.0001 EURe fee and automatically receive 100 EURe to compensate for the cost of the generation and sending of the search response. The funds periodically arrive into the airline's account as they have configured.
The booking process is powered by blockchain technology which has certain terms, worth understanding. The "minting" of a booking token acts as a digital confirmation, recording the transaction immutably on a decentralized ledger to prevent fraud and ensure trust between partners and across the network. The process requires system payments known as "gas fees" paid in the native token of the network — CAM.
The supplier generating the token currently costing around 0.015 € (based on 0.1 CAM, with 1 CAM valued at 0.15 €) which serves as a verifiable record of the booking, while the distributor executes a buy operation to acquire the token for approximately 0.0045 € (based on 0.03 CAM), completing the transaction with end-to-end transparency. Compared to the current GDS and aggregator fees, this blockchain approach slashes costs significantly, offering travel tech professionals a lightweight, scalable alternative that integrates seamlessly with existing systems.
At the moment, we are actively working with companies sharing the vision of the decentralized and open-source travel infrastructure to find new use cases and test various scenarios of companies operating on the Camino Messenger. In the tables below you can find all the figures representing the current state of the system.
| Scenario | LTB ratio | Service Fee (EURe/message) | Distribution cost per booking (minting) | Supplier NET profit per booking (minting) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Without service fees | 1000 | 0 | 0,0545 EURe | -0,065 EURe |
| With service fees | 1000 | 0,0001 | 0,1545 EURe | 0,005 EURe |
| High LTB with service fee | 25,000 | 0,0001 | 3,7545 EURe | 0,485 EURe |
| Supplier hosts server (with service fee) | 1000 | 0,0001 | 0,1545 EURe | 0,04 EURe |
The Camino Messenger plays a transformative role in the future of travel distribution. By cutting costs up to 90%, monetizing searches, and aligning incentives through decentralized ownership, it creates ideal digital space for distributors and suppliers to interact and exchange data. So if you would like to test or estimate the distribution costs you will be able to cut:
If you missed the early days of the Internet or Social Media to adjust your business to the changing digital landscape, it is your third chance to get onboard and preparing the team, technology and processes to thrive in the digital world of web3.
