TI: What is your current role and what part does blockchain play in it?
RL: I’m Head of Wirex Private, a bespoke crypto banking service. Essentially, I bring the human element to crypto, guiding my clients through the intricacies of cryptocurrencies and making sure they have a seamless experience. At Wirex, we offer a platform that empowers individuals to use cryptocurrencies for payments across assets and services, bridging the gap between traditional banking and innovative blockchain technology. Rather than reinventing traditional financial services, we enhance them by leveraging blockchain’s capabilities.
CP: I’m the Co-Founder of Mood Labs, which is a marketing agency for Web 3 companies and products, based in Dubai. We founded it in 2022 and have been providing marketing, consultancy, go-to-market strategies and growth services for clients in that space ever since. Web 3 is a big umbrella, so clients could be a protocol that’s building infrastructure for the blockchain space or an NFT collection or a coin. It really varies. We use on-chain data for research purposes and for some campaigns.
TI: How has your Glion education helped in your chosen career path?
RL: Like hospitality, this is a service-oriented industry, so having an understanding of luxury and personalized service is highly relevant to my current work. The hands-on experience from Glion’s program provides a deep understanding of both front-end excellence and back-end operations, essential for achieving seamless service delivery. These skills are versatile and applicable across industries. And they’re valuable preparation for the real-world challenges ahead.
CP: A lot of people ask me what the link is between crypto and hospitality management because at first it can seem like those worlds are far apart. But what we learned at Glion helped me grow personally and professionally. In my world, empathy is essential and, to market a product successfully, you have to be able to understand the consumer and put yourself in their shoes. Networking is critical to my line of work, too. I found things such as the internships, the university environment and the focus on nurturing the famous ‘Glion Spirit’ were perfect for developing these soft skills I’ve needed.
TI: What kind of applications could blockchain have in hospitality?
RL: Blockchain technology holds significant promise for the hospitality industry, particularly in improving loyalty reward programs. Currently, loyalty points issued by airlines, hotels and car rental services are valuable digital assets, yet their transferability is often limited. By leveraging blockchain, these points can be made more easily transferable among partner organizations securely and transparently. This not only increases their value to customers, it also boosts operational efficiency for hospitality providers. While we are still exploring and experimenting with these possibilities, the potential for innovation in this area is really compelling.
CP: While at Glion we talked a lot about innovating. I think it has a lot of potential in the events industry and, for example, I can see things such as ticketing moving onto blockchain soon enough. We are also now able to create NFTs [non-fungible tokens] at a large scale and distribute them to people who attend events as a sort of digital souvenir. These are linked to a wallet that people create just by signing up with an email. And that gives companies access to a large consumer base they can stay in touch with, invite to further events and really reinforce that brand connection.
