Lastminute CEO joins Travel Ledger advisory board
Fabio Cannavale, CEO of Lastminute.com group and chairman of the Lastminute.com Foundation, is to join the Travel Ledger advisory board.
Travel Ledger is a blockchain-based project that is building a distributed billing and settlement platform for the global travel industry.
It said it would be announcing the appointment of more industry experts as advisors over the coming weeks as it starts to unveil more details about the next phase of the project.
John McEwan, chairman of the advisory board, said: "I am delighted to welcome Fabio to the advisory board. He has a wealth of knowledge and has enjoyed a very successful career. His insight will prove to be very valuable to us."
Cannavale said: "I am delighted to join John, Roberto and the team at Travel Ledger. A common universal records and payments solution is desperately needed for the travel and hospitality industry and with the advent of blockchain it has now become realistic to deliver a seriously low-cost, high- quality solution that can match the success of IATA’s BSP system for airlines."
Roberto Da Re, founder of Travel Ledger, added: "Fabio will not only bring a lot of experience within the travel industry space, but he’ll also be able to help us present our proposition to the investment community, something that will be key as we approach the next phase of our project in order to scale up the business quickly."
Cannavale, co-founder of eDreams Italy and then volagratis.com, is also co-founder of Boost Heroes, a company that invests in firms that have high potential but that are still in the first stages of their development.
Travel Ledger said its platform will allow all billing records between buyers and sellers of travel products to be stored in a shared, decentralised and authenticated ledger.
While the initial release will be focused on the delivery of the seller invoice to the buyer, subsequent phases will focus on automating bank, credit/debit cards and even cryptocurrencies payments, it said.
The Travel Ledger Alliance will be the platform governing body, running the day to day operations and managing the platform.
Members and all parties providing support to the platform will benefit from several financial rewards with the objective of widening the adoption of the platform and lowering the cost for all members, as transactions increase.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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