Optimizing Hotel Food Supply Chain Management Through Smart Contracts

Abstract

The complex structure of hotel food supply chains presents significant challenges for monitoring product safety and quality, largely due to the involvement of numerous participants, lengthy supply chain cycles, and mistrust in both data and centralized systems. Traditional hotel food supply chains often suffer from poor communication and fragmented information, making traceability and rapid response to safety issues difficult. This paper addresses these challenges by proposing a framework based on Blockchain technology, smart contracts, and consortium models to enhance traceability, data authenticity, and operational transparency in hotel food supply chains. The framework leverages smart contracts to automate transactions and compliance, while the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is used for decentralized storage of environmental and crop growth data, with file hashes stored on-chain to improve data security and prevent blockchain storage explosion. By reducing reliance on central institutions and promoting data shareability, the proposed system dismantles information silos and increases trust among supply chain participants. The paper includes a comparative analysis of hotel food supply chain issues and practices in India, China, and the United States, providing a case study for each country. Furthermore, it discusses future risks associated with implementing Blockchain-based traceability in hotel food supply chains and outlines strategies for risk mitigation.