Alibaba has opened a hotel loaded with artificial intelligence (AI) and robots.
FlyZoo Hotel has an automated series of procedures like check-in, lights control, and room service.
Company’s 1st future hotel
The hotel is located in Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, where Alibaba is headquartered. It is known as the company’s first “future hotel”.
FlyZoo Hotel’s CEO Wang Qun said that safety and service will always be their top priority. Wang said, “So we are already concerning about this kind of issue. First of all, we will completely comply with the local government policies and local laws. Secondly with our system capabilities, because you know all our systems are cloud based, we have more and more strong capabilities to protect those data and privacies from our individual guests.”
Use face to open doors and check in
With the facial recognition system installed in the hotel, customers can check into the hotel by simply scanning their faces. The feature also enables customers to use their faces as key cards to open doors and access other hotel services.
Moreover, customers can also control the lights, television and curtains in the room via Alibaba’s voice-activated digital assistant.
Robots will serve dishes
Robots are deployed to serve dishes, cocktails, and coffee to customers. Hotel bookings and check-out can be done through a smartphone application. The hotel is the latest move of the Chinese tech giant’s foray into traditional industries like the hospitality sector.
A customer said, “We don’t have to waste our time on registering and waiting in lines. Many services like check in can be done with a smartphone. Secondly, I feel more safe with the help of this technology and these smart facilities.”
Will robots put the human hotel staff out of a job?
Sun Xiaoting, an employee of FlyZoo Hotel said, “I’m not worried about being replaced by robots, because machines and robots can only do some simple works at this hotel. It is the human employees that can provide better services. The robots can save us a lot of time so that we can better serve our customers.”
Today, many hotels across the world are now teaming with tech companies to upgrade their facilities with AI and IoT technologies.
