50 hotels in Hainan allow guests to pay with their face

Network solutions provider for the hospitality industry Shiji, has paired up with Alibaba’s Fliggy to integrate facial recognition in 50 hotels across the island of Hainan — speeding up the process of check-in and payment.

Under the agreement, Fliggy will handle the reservation and customer data, while Shiji will be responsible for the integration, distribution, payment gateway and on-site systems. The partnership aims to provide a seamless guest experience for travellers in China.

When making a reservation through Fliggy, the guest’s information is processed via Shiji Distribution Solutions on the hotel’s property management system. When the guest arrives at check-in, they simply have to scan their ID’s on the kiosk installed in the hotel. The software then verifies the ID against the Public Security System, performs a credit authorisation and produces the room card.

The system involves integration between multiple systems and across multiple verticals such as payments and public tourism system.

The idea is that this can be expanded to all hotels and thus reduce wait times for guests while increasing the time to assist guests for hotel staff. The entire process takes around 30 seconds from arrival to the room card issue including payment authorisation.

To protect the personal details of the guests, Custom hardware has been created to ensure optimum speed and guest data security is maintained at all times.

“We’re monitoring privacy and efficiency closely”

“Our aim with this project has been to find ways for hotels to increase guest satisfaction by reducing wait times as much as possible. Working with Fliggy and our partner hotels have made this a success and we’re monitoring privacy and efficiency closely to develop ways to increase this across more hotels,” said Kevin King, COO of Shiji Group.

Fliggy seconded Shiji’s statements saying that the company’s in-depth industry knowledge and international experience have given them access to solutions that they hadn’t predicted.

This is not the first time that such technology has made its way in hotels. In July, Fliggy and Marriott International debuted facial recognition technology at two Marriott International properties in China – Hangzhou Marriott Hotel Qianjiang and Sanya Marriott Hotel Dadonghai Bay.