In the case it's digital currency: Saying blockchain technology is nothing more a distributed database is like saying TCP/IP is nothing more than flipping voltages on a wire. It misses the point of what the technology can be used for.
Blockchain technology is the underylying mechanism for digital currency. Digital currency in the short term will allow less friction for online payments and has the potential to allow for easier banking options and a unifying global currency in the long term.
For places that have a strong banking system, the need for digital currency isn't so apparent. For places that have failing banking infrastructure or are building new banking infrastructure, digital currency is an attractive option as we're steadily becoming more connected and "wired".
There's a lot of hype, much of which is unwarranted, but behind that hype is the realization that digital currency and the implications of implementing it worldwide and having it widely available will have far reaching consequences for many aspects of our digital lives.
In the case you're talking about blockchain without the digital currency aspect then I agree with you to a certain extent. My generous read on the situation is that businesses want to modernize their supply chain infrastructure and are looking for some standard to adopt that will provide them with guidance and "best practices". This could allow them to use something that can be implemented and maintained with lower costs and potentially even be used for outside audits and federation/communication with other entities.
Personally, I think this is more akin to the Java/XML "craze". XML was adopted as a sort of standard but the underlying reason wasn't that XML was any panacea, it just happened to be the technology that was in vogue for businesses and was an excuse to modernize/digitize their infrastructure. The move to digitize data instead of either having a hap-hazard scheme or using paper was the motivation, not that XML was any great technology. Using XML also created it's own hap-hazard data schema realizations and, in the end, JSON provides more of the spirit of what XML promised but the move from pre-digitization to post-digitization provided such a strong incentive that it didn't really matter.
In other words, we're seeing businesses try to modernize different aspects of logistics. The current trend is blockchain because it provides enough key words that they can rally around it. The motivation, in my opinion, is more that they want to modernize/digitize their supply chain so they're looking for something/anything that provides guidance, standards or other infrastructure to that effect.