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Ribes Vicente, Guillermo (2025) The Influence of Blockchain on the Intermediation of Accommodation Services in the German Tourism Industry. PhD thesis, University of Gloucestershire. doi:10.46289/NZMl7751
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16556 Vincente, Guillermo Ribes (2025) The Influence of Blockchain on the Intermediation of Accommodation Services in the German Tourism Industry.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License All Rights Reserved. Download (10MB) | Preview |
Abstract
The German accommodation sector, encompassing hotels and B&Bs, is highly depend-ent on online travel agencies (OTAs) and booking platforms, resulting in a concentrated market. These intermediaries charge substantial fees to provide trust-enhancing mech-anisms between guests and providers as well as information-aggregation systems that help guests navigate diverse offerings. Blockchain, as a decentralised booking system, offers a potential alternative. However, despite increasing academic interest in block-chain’s disruptive potential, existing innovation adoption frameworks rarely address two interconnected research problems: (1) the sector’s pronounced historical interrelation-ship with emerging technologies that created the dependency on centralised intermedi-aries, and (2) the blockchain-specific disintermediation capacity in a sector dominated by centralised intermediaries. This gap is compounded by the absence of service pro-viders’ perspectives, particularly those of decision-makers with authority to adopt such systems. This study asks how this dynamic can be conceptualised within a theoretical extension to address sector-specific challenges. It argues that the generic Technology–Organisa-tion–Environment (TOE) framework (Tornatzky & Fleischer, 1991) can be extended with two additional contexts: first, the sector-specific pronounced historical interrelationship with emerging centralised intermediary technologies, a nuance that the generic ‘Environ-ment’ context cannot fully capture. Secondly, blockchain’s inherent disintermediation ca-pacity, which may create disruptive dynamics that go beyond the traditional ‘Technology’ context and is conceptually grounded in Disruptive Innovation theory (Christensen, 1997). The study introduces the TOEDI (Technology, Organisation, External, Disintermediation, Interrelationship) framework, developed within a social constructivist paradigm. Semi-structured interviews with decision-makers were thematically analysed, and findings were refined through a Delphi consensus technique with statistical measures. The results suggest a disconnect between the academic discussion of blockchain’s potential influ-ence and the limited awareness among decision-makers. However, once introduced to the concept, practitioners recognised potential benefits, such as lower fees, reduced OTA dependence, and stronger guest relationships. At the same time, sector-specific obstacles, including software integration challenges and scepticism towards blockchain, emerged. TOEDI contributes both theoretically, as a sector-specific extension of TOE, and practically, as an extended analytical lens for assessing blockchain adoption in in-termediary-dominated contexts.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | |||||||||
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | German Tourism Industry, Accommodation Services | |||||||||
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software > QA76.9 Other topics > QA76.9.B56 Blockchains |
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| Divisions: | Schools and Research Institutes > School of Business, Computing and Social Sciences | |||||||||
| Depositing User: | Kate Rea | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 29 Sep 2026 13:30 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 30 Sep 2026 08:00 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/16556 |
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