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Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication

ISSN : 2514-9342

Article publication date: 13 June 2023

Digitalization, financial technologies and the internet have rapidly advanced the business ecosystem posing a disruptive threat to how operations are fundamentally performed. Global hospitality and tourism companies face this challenge and have been early adopters in this field. This study aims to examine the role of blockchain technology in strengthening the marketing mix (product, price, place and promotion) and the its related impacts on the tourism industry.

Design/methodology/approach

This research adopts a systematic literature review approach to synthesize and assess the literature published on blockchain in tourism and tends to build a conceptual framework that depicts the relationships between different constructs.

The results show a lot of interest in using blockchain technology due to numerous advantages to tourism industry. This innovative technology can change this sector radically; assist small economies in strengthening and transitioning to the level of developed economies; and assist tourism companies in eliminating corruption, establishing a secure network and promoting equality between small and large entities.

Originality/value

Through industry examples demonstrating real-life use cases such as startups operating on the application of blockchain in tourism, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is a first attempt to draw the impact of blockchain technology on product, price, place, promotion (4Ps) in tourism sector. The proposed nine relationships can facilitate the future researchers in advancing the state-of-art on how blockchain-based technologies can shape the customers experience through promoting confidentiality, co-creation and effective destination planning.

• Marketing mix
• Digitalization
• Destination planning

Acknowledgements

This research received no external funding. The authors really appreciate the constructive comments and suggestions from the editor and anonymous reviewers.

Kathuria, S. ,  , S. and Tandon, U. (2023), "Conceptualizing blockchain in tourism consumer experience: implications for tourism marketing", Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication , Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-01-2023-0012

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5 Companies Using Blockchain to Change Travel

Erika Rasure is globally-recognized as a leading consumer economics subject matter expert, researcher, and educator. She is a financial therapist and transformational coach, with a special interest in helping women learn how to invest.

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Blockchain is emerging as a powerful technological force that promises to change the travel industry’s status quo. In fact, it's already being heralded as a game-changer for many different industries. Remember that blockchain is a type of database that is commonly used in the cryptocurrency market wherein data is stored in blocks and then chained together.

Services that are based on blockchain are already isolating major pain points in a very fragmented industry— travel and tourism . It should come as no surprise that this sector is broken up into different parts. Think flights, hotels, car rentals, among other factors. So how can blockchain help? These services are able to ease hurdles in the industry by resolving common challenges and streamlining processes while building a more equitable ecosystem that shuns gatekeepers. 

The technology’s impact is more than hypothetical, though, with several businesses disrupting several nodes on the industry’s supply chain . The following five companies are improving key aspects of the travel ecosystem and establishing blockchain’s place in the industry.  

Key Takeaways

• Winding Tree aims to connect travelers with service providers while minimizing fees and costs for both.
• Webjet is an online travel agency that tracks and alerts travelers, hotels, and agents about booking inaccuracies.
• Sandblock's blockchain technology helps users maximize points collected through loyalty programs.
• The Known Traveler Digital Identity System is a joint platform developed by Accenture and the World Economic Forum that collects and hosts information from frequent international travelers.
• TravelChain allows users to collect and monetize travel data, and receive tokens as compensation for sharing with travel service providers.

1. Winding Tree: Displacing Online Booking Hubs

Major travel service aggregators like Expedia and Priceline dominate airfare bookings. But this comes at a serious cost to both travelers and airlines. Booking through these websites often includes hefty fees and surcharges made possible by their largely unchallenged status as gatekeepers. Blockchain-based startup Winding Tree works to unseat these entrenched giants by challenging their role as industry middlemen.

Winding Tree is a private company based in Switzerland. Founded in 2017, it reaches numerous parts of the travel and tourism industry, including hotels and airfare. The company uses "blockchain technology to enable a fair and competitive travel distribution market."

The company seeks to connect travelers directly with service providers like airlines, hotels, and tour guides with its LÍF token. The aim is to minimize fees for travelers while reducing costs for service providers. LÍF is Winding Tree's platform cryptocurrency .

The company’s clever use of smart contracts and the ERC827 protocol delivers better savings for every stakeholder in the travel and tourism industry. Winding Tree's nonprofit status assures there are no middlemen adding unnecessary fees to the booking process.

2. Webjet: Adding Assurances and Avoiding Inaccuracies

Inaccurate or lost hotel bookings add considerable stress and anxiety to a travel experience. When this happens, customers usually have to take on fees across several layers of the supply chain while providers consistently extract value. 

Thanks to blockchain’s immutable distributed ledger technology, Webjet has built a new model designed to avoid these irritating booking experiences. The company is a prominent online travel agency based in Australia and was founded in 1998. Webjet claims that it is Australia and New Zealand's leading online agency and is a leader in online tools and technology.

Webjet officially launched its blockchain platform in 2019. The system enhances the customer experience by recording all entries on the blockchain’s immutable ledger, which reduces the likelihood of mistaken or lost bookings and reduces the layers between sellers and consumers. It does this by locating real-time data problems that may occur between customers, agents, and hotels and sending messages to every party.

The technology’s improved security features provide better protection for the ecosystem. Apart from building greater supply chain efficiencies and reducing costs for hotels, travelers ultimately benefit from lower-cost bookings along with more transparency and greater accountability.

Decentralization is a key component of blockchain technology. It transfers control from a centralized entity to a larger network.

3. Sandblock: Improving Loyalty’s Fungibility

Loyalty rewards have gone through several iterations in the competitive travel and tourism industry. Many frequent travelers belong to airline and hotel loyalty programs . Spending points and miles often means jumping through multiple hoops to redeem rewards.  Despite high participation rates in loyalty programs, many customers report a willingness to accept better deals from competing carriers and service providers if the price is right.

Sandblock is one of the newest entrants to this part of the industry. Founded in 2017, Sandblock is based in France. It aims to change the loyalty landscape with its blockchain-based platform by allowing travel providers to create their own loyalty tokens , which can be exchanged for brand-specific rewards. Not only that but they can also be used like real coins and exchanged for fiat money .

Users can also apply their tokens to redeem rewards across a variety of services beyond the company that awarded them and can earn more by being active participants in the community. For businesses, the reward is better data and transparency , and an ecosystem that actually returns value thanks to improved targeting and happier consumers.

4. Accenture: Striving Towards Shorter Lines

Spending hours waiting in lines at airports is one of the major annoyances of traveling the globe not just for travelers but also for airlines and airport staff. Congestion can add to the time spent in lines for security, customs, and passport control. Security needs are also trumpeted as the reason for tighter controls and oversight, all of which contribute to frequent travelers' headaches.

To overcome these challenges and expedite the security process, Accenture ( ACN ) developed the Known Traveler Digital Identity System.  The consulting firm partnered with the World Economic Forum (WEF) to help disrupt the global travel industry.

This blockchain is designed to collect and host identifying information from frequent international travelers, enabling a freer flow of data between travelers and customs agents to ease the clearance process.

This allows travelers to gain control over their digital identities with better security thanks to distributed ledger technology. Airports and airlines benefit from accelerated processing and better security, helping shorten lines all while alleviating one of the biggest traveler pain points.

5. TravelChain: Making the Most of Data

Data is a prized commodity in today’s economy . It offers businesses insights and advantages when used appropriately. Data generated by travelers, which is highly valuable to service providers, is generally restricted to gatekeepers such as Expedia and Orbitz. These companies offer a faster booking process at a price. This raises costs and adds to the informational asymmetry for service providers. 

TravelChain is a new entrant that wants to upend the paradigm with an open-source blockchain. The Russian company seeks to remove intermediaries on the supply chain. Users are empowered to collect and monetize their travel data, keeping it safe from prying eyes and receiving tokens as compensation for sharing with travel service providers.  These tokens can then be redeemed for services or money.

Participating companies can access more granular information about travelers, channeling these insights for more pinpointed promotion targeting. Apart from personalizing marketing, these companies can offer customized tours and promotions based on a traveler’s preferences, closing the entire ecosystem loop and delivering value to all stakeholders.

Traveling should be comfortable, cost-effective, and most importantly, enjoyable. While fees, booking irregularities, bad reviews, and long lines may be symptomatic of the current travel environment, blockchain is challenging this status quo with a host of new services designed to modernize and streamline the travel experience. 

Thanks to the formation of more equitable ecosystems constructed to reduce the presence of intermediaries, travelers and service providers can build more mutually fulfilling relationships that contribute to better overall value.

Investing in cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings ("ICOs") is highly risky and speculative, and this article is not a recommendation by Investopedia or the writer to invest in cryptocurrencies or ICOs. Since each individual's situation is unique, a qualified professional should always be consulted before making any financial decisions. Investopedia makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy or timeliness of the information contained herein. As of the date this article was written, the author owns cryptocurrencies.

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What We Can Expect from Blockchain Technology in Tourism

But first, what is blockchain anyway?

Blockchain is a technology that publicly stores all the transactions that a particular network produces. Each register gets encrypted, and they get grouped into blocks that form a chain, thus leading to the blockchain moniker.

Blockchain technology’s primary characteristic is that the data is decentralized , meaning that they get distributed throughout the different nodes or computers that are part of the network. Each one of them has a copy of all the compiled information. Once a block or a register gets added, all blockchain members have to confirm it to get added in the copy that each part of the blockchain stores. This process ensures that the blockchain’s data is secure, traceable, unchangeable, and transparent.

This video gives you a straightforward explanation of how blockchain works:

But how does blockchain technology ensure such a high level of security? Most of the time, we use a centralized model, or that all our information on the Internet gets stored in one place such as Google, Facebook, or WhatsApp. In contrast, blockchain decentralizes all this information. As we just mentioned, they get stored in different nodes all over the Internet, to guarantee the authenticity of that information in a much more reliable way. 

Three advantages of blockchain technology  

By its nature, blockchain offers a series of advantages or characteristics that apply to any industry, including tourism and tech . That’s why a MarketWatch study projected annual growth in its use of 51% in different markets.

1. Data security

The data inside blockchain gets decentralized through the nodes that make up blockchain's ledge; since there is no single failure point, with the data's safety assured.

2. Immutability

The algorithms that blockchain uses are designed to avoid modifications in the blocks, thanks to a chain of trust that guarantees that the data stored within the blockchain has not undergone any change.

3. Decentralization

The decentralization in blockchain gets produced because no entity has complete control over the processing of information; instead, it gets distributed throughout the various nodes that form the blockchain.

Applications of blockchain

Blockchain has served as the basis for other technology or applications, and some of them could be useful for the tourism industry. Here are some examples:

1. Smart Contracts

Smart Contracts are contracts that get handled using blockchain technology, allowing for these processes to cut out the middlemen (such as notaries, banks, or other entities) and lower costs and reduce processing times.

2. A single digital ID

There is a lot of talk about projects based on digital identification like the Alastria project that the leading companies listed on Spain's IBEX 35 stock exchange are spearheading. This system allows for tourism operations to simplify the tasks they need to complete and have all the available information about an individual in one place.

3. Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency consists of virtual coins that can get exchanged as if it were any traditional currency. The difference is that they are out of the control of governments and financial institutions. If an exchange gets conducted, it will be registered in the blockchain network entirely transparently.

Blockchain in the tourism industry

Tourism and blockchain have the potential to become a powerful combination as the technology can bring safety and transparency to several critical touchpoints. In the case of a travel agency booking flights and hotels for a customer, it has to send the information to the different firms. Blockchain could make this operation more secure and transparent since the responsibility spreads throughout the whole network. The same will happen with foreign transactions, increasing the level of trust among all involved parties.

This video shows a brief explanation of how blockchain can benefit the tourism industry:

Possible blockchain applications in the tourism industry

Given all of blockchain technology’s characteristics and possibilities, some experts are pointing towards possible uses within the tourism industry. Here are some of the most interesting:

Easy, safe, and traceable payments

When it comes to payments, the main advantage to point out is that payments with cryptocurrency will be much more secure and traceable. As we previously mentioned, all transactions carried out on the blockchain remain registered in the chain and cannot get modified. Not only that, as it’s a decentralized system, but there also won’t be any intermediaries that can intervene or delay payment.

As such, we would no longer need to exchange currency when we travel to another country and simultaneously be subject to the trustworthiness or volatility of these foreign exchange operations. That’s why making payments using the blockchain can make a relevant difference when it comes to overseas transactions. In some cases, a process can experience a delay of more than a week or get canceled during that period with all the inconveniences that this causes.

Hotel or Transportation Coordination and Management

Decentralized management systems could also result in significant savings for large firms as this could let them get rid of the middlemen. By that same token, information flows securely while being accessible at all times, reducing management times and providing universal access to information.

Business ratings

It's increasingly common that we look at forums and read user reviews when we travel; however, we cannot always guarantee who wrote them or their accuracy. With blockchain, all the information that shows up in the network is public, dependable, and secure, achieving better transparency and increasing consumer trust.  

Baggage management

Blockchain could become very useful to track our baggage’s location once we say goodbye to it at the check-in counter. It changes hands throughout the trip, just like we do. It’s possible, with the help of technology like blockchain, to track between companies and know where our suitcase is at all times.

Rewards systems

Could we be talking about the end of the loyalty cards? Many travel firms create loyalty programs for their customers with the aim of turning them into repeat customers. Blockchain would facilitate these processes and allow customers to check their points and, for example, exchange them for the cryptocurrency.  

Three real-life examples of blockchain in tourism

1. Winding Tree

This company is developing a decentralized trip reservation platform. Winding Tree seeks to eliminate the external middlemen with the help of blockchain technology and significantly reduce the price up to 20%.

2. ShoCard and SITA

ShoCard and SITA have proposed revolutionizing the travel industry through identity management. While the project is currently in the early stages, the hope is that the platform eases the identification of individuals in hotels or airport checkpoints.

This project aims to create a loyalty program using blockchain. Trippki lets customers and companies in the tourism industry get directly in contact with each other. They assign customers tokens for staying, for example, in a specific hotel and they get registered in the blockchain, never expiring and redeemable at any time.  

The challenges left to tackle

Blockchain technology is still in the early stages of its life. While there’s consensus about its potential, it is always challenging to know where it can get to and how it will impact industries like tourism.  

I think that there are two primary challenges in this realm. The first is personal identification . That’s because technology, by its nature, could prove to be a significant obstacle, especially when personal data comes into the picture. That’s why we’re increasing regulations over personal information on the Internet through specific legislation like GDPR in the EU or the CCPA and the growing use of permission marketing . Blockchain’s future in marketing lies in granting more protection to users.

Standardization could also prove to be a substantial barrier. Although blockchain serves as the base technology, every company, organization, or collective can create its network and include its algorithms (just like with cryptocurrencies), making communication between different systems difficult.

The swift implementation of this technology in a plethora of industries and changing behavior from consumers increasing their familiarity with these concepts makes us aware that it’ll be a more recurring concept in our lives in the future as it adapts to evolving user needs and challenges. That’s the way to enjoying a more secure, trustworthy way to travel. 

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Blockchain Applications in Tourism and Tourism Marketing: A Short Review

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• Ioannis Antoniadis 4 ,
• Konstantinos Spinthiropoulos 4 &
• Stamatis Kontsas 5  

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics ((SPBE))

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Blockchain is one of the most prominent and discusses technologies of the twenty-first century that has the potential to change, the way that we are conducting business, payments, and the management processes in a big number of industries. Based on the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), blockchain applications provides a breakthrough and innovative solutions due to the security they offer to the participants of the network, the efficiency of record keeping and transaction execution, and the automation solutions in terms of executing contracts when certain conditions are met (smart contracts). Despite the fact that most literature concerning blockchain focuses on its use in the finance industry and cryptocurrencies, there is a growing interest in the ways that this technology could be applied in other industries and management processes as well, both in the private and the public sector. In this paper, we are going to review the main propositions and findings in the literature concerning the use of blockchain technology in tourism and tourism marketing. We identify potential uses of blockchain in the tourism and hospitality industry in general and outline the benefits derived, and the challenges that will arise from the adoption of this innovative technology. Finally, we point out some direction for future research on the topic.

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Antoniadis, I., Spinthiropoulos, K., Kontsas, S. (2020). Blockchain Applications in Tourism and Tourism Marketing: A Short Review. In: Kavoura, A., Kefallonitis, E., Theodoridis, P. (eds) Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36126-6_41

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Blockchain in tourism: you need to know this

Travel agencies, tour operators, hotel companies and airlines can in fact access a sort of archive as the blockchain allows you to keep a record of all the commercial exchanges that have taken place and to proceed with payments even without the need for a third party to carry out the role of mediator.

In this sector, therefore, this system can guarantee important advantages for optimizing processes and speeding up transaction steps.In this regard, some practical examples can be cited. One of these is the possibility of making so-called loyalty programs more user-friendly.

In fact, the use of miles outside flights can be managed by a standard such as the blockchain thanks, for example, to sharing with distribution chains or online commerce. Payment activities in the travel industry can also be automated.

Baggage tracking and the entire logistics chain can be improved.In this regard, the case of the company SITA is significant, which conducted an experiment with British Airways at Heathrow airport for the synchronization of all passenger data on the blockchain.

Another interesting reality is constituted by the Swiss company Winding Tree which has created a platform based on the Ethereum cryptocurrency which ensures a lowering of transaction costs in the sector. The Lufthansa group, Air New Zealand and Nordic Choice Hotels have shared this project as partners.These are just a few examples that suggest an increasingly near future in which the blockchain will be used for every stage of the journey: documentation, booking, boarding, security up to check-in at the chosen hotel. We are still in the early stages of using this technology in this sector and, as has happened in other innovative contexts, this will give life to actors who will favor product aggregation by opening up a new market even to small businesses .

A travel package, in fact, is made up of several operators belonging to different sectors: transport, hospitality, catering, entertainment. In the private context, as regards the booking service for example, we have already seen the acquisition by, for example, Tripadvisor of the Icelandic platform Bukun.io, while Booking.com has bought Denver's FareHarbor.com. In both cases, these are platforms created to aggregate offers for the purpose of booking tourist activities.On the other hand, on the hospitality front, the largest German tour operator, TUI, has transferred the entire offer deposit to an internal distributed database, using it to move the availability of beds between the various hospitality points .

This aspect guarantees that such information can never end up offline or be canceled by mistake or following a hacker attack, also ensuring that commercial exchanges are all traceable.

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• The applications of the blockchain
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Foreign direct investment in Europe declines for first time since pandemic

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• European foreign direct investment (FDI) faces first decline in three years with number of projects down 4% and jobs down 7% in 2023
• France tops foreign investment league table but investment down 5%; UK bucks trend with 6% increase and moves up to second; Germany down to third after sharp 12% decline
• 72% of businesses plan to establish or expand operations in Europe over the next year, but risks remain 

Foreign direct investment (FDI) into Europe declined in 2023, falling by 4% compared with 2022, and has dropped to 11% lower than in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, according to the annual EY European Attractiveness Survey 2024 – the most in-depth and long-running annual analysis of FDI into the continent.

France, the UK and Germany continue to attract the bulk of FDI and retain the top three spots, accounting for around half of total projects. FDI projects decreased by 5% (1,194 projects) in France and by 12% in Germany (733). The UK bucked the trend and moved ahead of Germany into second place with a 6% increase in the number of projects (985).

Despite hopes that FDI into Europe would bounce back post-pandemic, slow economic growth, spiraling inflation, soaring energy prices and a febrile geopolitical environment has caused the first downturn in European FDI since 2020.

Throughout 2023, businesses around the world announced 5,694 greenfield and expansion projects in 44 European countries, compared with 5,962 in 2022 – a year-on-year decrease of 4%, compared with 1% growth in 2022 and 5% growth in 2021. Investment is now 14% lower than its peak in 2017 and the total number of jobs created in Europe as a result of FDI fell 7% year on year to 319,923.

Companies cited increased regulatory burden, volatile energy prices and political instability as the top three risks impacting investment decisions. Europe has pioneered new regulatory initiatives on artificial intelligence (AI), sustainability and data protection and investors are worried these could stifle business growth.  The ongoing energy crisis, uncertainty in the run-up to the European elections and rising social tensions and political radicalism are also concerning investors.

Julie Linn Teigland, EY EMEIA Area Managing Partner, says:

“Europe is in urgent need of foreign investment and this survey should serve as a wake-up call right across the continent. Policymakers must work together with businesses to create the conditions where investment can flourish and business thrives.

“Foreign investment builds the European economy by creating jobs, stimulating innovation and boosting exports. Despite the continued disappointing trajectory for investment in 2023, there are reasons to be optimistic about the longer term future. But urgent action must be taken now to help ensure Europe remains competitive in the face of increasingly stiff competition from the US and China.”

France stagnates, the UK rebounds and Germany falters

In line with the Europe-wide trend, investment in France fell by 5%. Despite this, the number of jobs created in France by FDI increased by 4%, underlining the ongoing benefits of business-friendly reforms and a comparatively healthy economy relative to other European countries. 

The UK bucked Europe’s negative trend with a 6% increase in FDI projects in 2023. After a 2022 marked by political uncertainty, high inflation and rising energy prices, investors perceived something of a return to stability to UK markets last year, with foreign software and IT providers particularly loyal to London, which moved above Paris into the top spot as Europe’s #No. 1 investment region.

FDI in Germany decreased by 12% in 2023, continuing a steady decline since the onset of COVID-19. Industrial investors have been deterred by the recessionary environment, high energy prices and concerns about the security of energy supply. Complex bureaucracy and high labor costs also continue to limit Germany’s ability to attract more foreign businesses.

Reorganization of supply chains benefits Southern and Eastern Europe

Several countries in Southern and Eastern Europe benefitted significantly from businesses’ reorganization of supply chains and reshoring of production activities. The number of manufacturing projects decreased slightly across Europe, but increases were seen in Spain, Turkey, Poland, Italy, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Slowing investment in the digital and business services sectors impacted investment in countries for which these areas are traditional strengths, such as the Netherlands and Belgium.

The war between Russia and Ukraine continues to impact investment in markets bordering either of those countries, including Romania (-13%), Finland (-32%) and the Baltic countries such as Latvia (-31%) and Lithuania (-40%).

FDI in services sectors declines but manufacturing proves resilient

The number of FDI projects in software and IT services and business and professional services — traditionally Europe’s largest sectors for investment — fell by 19% and 27%, respectively. Both are suffering from the effects of purse-tightening on the part of their clients and a general decline in outsourcing.

Investment in tourism and culture, in contrast, increased 130% in 2023. The sector continues to rebound as consumers return to spending on leisure and travel, free from pandemic-induced restrictions.

Investment in manufacturing remained relisient, declining by 1%. Businesses maintained manufacturing investment to ensure that they can meet consumer demand, which is expected to rise. Ongoing efforts to reorganize supply chains and relocate production bases to Europe also helped maintain manufacturing investment levels.

Optimism remains despite gloomy picture, but risks remain

Despite a gloomy overall picture, there is scope for optimism, as 72% of the businesses surveyed indicate plans to establish or expand operations in Europe over the next year – up from 67% in 2022 – a sign that Europe still matters in current and future business plans.

Investors are positive about Europe’s long-term prospects because the economic situation is expected to gradually improve. Moreover, in the context of rising geopolitical tension, the relative stability of Europe’s major economies is a considerable advantage.

However, leaders surveyed see the increased “regulatory burden” as the biggest threat to Europe's attractiveness over the next three years. Europe has pioneered new regulatory initiatives in areas including carbon disclosure, supply chain due diligence, data protection and the safe use of AI. Investors are worried that the expanding regulatory framework will stifle European business growth and agility. Reflecting concerns about the energy crisis of the past two years, “energy prices and supply issues” are considered the second biggest threat to Europe's attractiveness, with “political instability” in Europe ranked third. This is due to uncertainty in the run-up to the European elections and rising social tensions and political radicalism at local levels.

The full report can be accessed here .

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About the EY Europe Attractiveness Survey 2024

For this 23rd edition of the Europe Attractiveness Survey, we again draw on two sources.

• Our evaluation of FDI in Europe is based on the EY European Investment Monitor (EIM). This EY proprietary database enables us to track projects announced in 2023 across 44 countries.
• We explore Europe’s perceived attractiveness via an online survey of international decision-makers. Field research was conducted in February and March 2024 based on a representative panel of 500 respondents.

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EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.