By Nnamdi Odumody
Fliggy, Alibaba’s online travel platform, is bridging the online and offline customer experience of the hospitality industry. It is leveraging cutting edge technology by collaborating with its sister members of the Alibaba ecosystem – Alibaba A.I Labs and Alibaba Cloud – to transform the hospitality industry with Flyzoo, a 290-room smart hotel in Hangzhou, China.
According to Andy Wang, CEO of Alibaba Future Hotel, the Flyzoo Hotel represents Alibaba’s ambition to merge hospitality with technology and empower the tourism industry to embrace innovation.
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Enter the FlyZoo Hotel. Located in Hangzhou, China, the 290-room FlyZoo Hotel was built by Alibaba’s online travel platform, Fliggy, along with other Alibaba Group business units, such as Alibaba A.I. Labs and Alibaba Cloud. Its purpose? To leverage cutting-edge tech to help transform the hospitality industry, one that keeps the sector current with the digital era we’re living in.
Its mobile app enables guests to make reservations, choose the hotel floor of their choice and even the direction their rooms face. Foreign guests require a few steps at a smart kiosk through the assistance of a hotel staff while Chinese customers check in through a seamless process through the app and move straight to their rooms.
Flyzoo utilizes artificial intelligence to engineer seamless experience for its guests. With facial recognition, guests can access the hotels rooms and other facilities rather than keys and key card which remain the norm. It uses the photo generated at check in to verify guests currently lodging at the hotel.
Each of its rooms is equipped with a TMall Genie Smart Assistant which helps guests adjust the temperature, lights, curtains and the TV. The tech also plays music and even answers simple questions – all with a voice command. If they need any room service, TMall Genie will handle it, delivered by an Alibaba robot.
Checkout time for guests is seamless and convenient with provision for notification to the hotel in advance, in case they decide to leave before the standard checkout time, and the rooms will automatically be released after check out.
Flyzoo’s technology makes the hotel smart, convenient, easy to use, freeing hotel staff from routine tasks to focus on delivering a better personalized customer experience for guests.