Getting more and more vacationers booking their travels through decentralized applications has been revealed as a big opportunity, and hotel reservations are no exception. In this tutorial, you will learn how to build a decentralized hotel booking system on top of the Ethereum blockchain that is completely autonomous and secure.

Prerequisites

• Basic knowledge of blockchain technology, cryptography, and Solidity
• A working local blockchain environment
• Knowledge of web development basics (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript)
• Understanding of smart contracts fundamentals

Setting Up the Environment

The first step in developing a decentralized hotel booking system is setting up a local Ethereum node and blockchain. This allows our smart contracts to be written and tested in a secure environment that allows us to simulate a real-world blockchain environment.

For a development environment, you can use the popular Ethereum development framework called Truffle, which provides a development environment with all the necessary tools to create, deploy, and execute smart contracts.

Writing a Smart Contract

For the hotel booking system, we will need to write a smart contract to hold user information and booking information. The smart contract must have functions that allow users to create a profile, search for hotels, book their reservations, and execute the payments.

We’ll use the Solidity programming language to create our smart contract. Solidity is a popular language used to create Ethereum-based dApps, and is the official language of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

pragma solidity ^0.6.6;

contract HotelBooking{
  //Defining Structs
  struct User {
    uint userId;
    string name;
    string email;
    uint deposit;
  }
  //Data Storage
  mapping (uint => User) public users;
  
  // Declaring the state variables
  uint public userCount;
  uint public paymentSent;
  
 //Creating a user profile
  function createUser (string memory _name, string memory _email) public {
    userCount++;
    users[userCount] = User({
      userId: userCount,
      name: _name,
      email: _email,
      deposit: 0
    });
  }

//Function to search hotels
  function searchHotels() public view returns (string memory result) {
      //Code to search the hotel here
  }

//Function to book hotels
  function bookHotel(uint userId, string memory _hotelName, uint _payment) public returns (string memory) {
      //Code to make the payment here
  }

//Function for executing payments
  function executePayment() public {
      //Code to execute the payments here
  } 
}

This smart contract will hold user information, including user ID, name, email address, and deposit amount. It also defines functions to create a user profile, search for hotels, book a hotel, and execute payments.

Developing the Front-END

Once the smart contract is written and deployed on the local blockchain, we need to develop the front-end of the decentralized application. Using JavaScript and HTML, we will create a web page that interacts with the blockchain. This includes features such as search boxes, booking forms, and user authentication.

The front-end will be responsible for calling the functions of the smart contract, such as creating a user profile, searching for hotels, and executing payments. It will also allow us to display the results in an easy to understand UI/UX format.

Deploying the Decentralized Application

Once the smart contract and the front-end have been developed, we need to deploy them on the blockchain. To do this, we will use popular blockchain tools such as MetaMask and Truffle. These tools allow us to interact with the blockchain in a secure and decentralized manner.

Once the decentralized application is deployed, users can start booking hotels and executing payments securely and anonymous. And, since the application is running on the blockchain, all transactions will be secure and immutable.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have looked at how to create a decentralized hotel booking system using blockchain technology. We have discussed the prerequisites of setting up a local blockchain environment and writing a smart contract using Solidity. We have also discussed how to develop the front-end and deploy the decentralized application on the blockchain.

Now you can easily create decentralized applications that run on the blockchain, and make secure, anonymous payments without any central authority or middleman.