Kiu Hung International Holdings Limited together with Shanghai Liming Intelligent Technology announced their plans to develop special robotic technologies for hotels. For this purpose, they coupled with Professor Shuji Nakamura, the 2014 Noble Laureate physicist.
As labor cost is a significant part of operating costs, hotels have to think of different ways of optimizing their expenses in the highly competitive industry. According to Professor Nakamura, robots and artificial intelligence (AI) are future trends in hospitality. AI can be used in a number of ways in hotels in robots, Laser Li-Fi, LED Li-Fi, and so on.
Shanghai Liming and Professor Nakamura have already developed a series of products that help fastening workflow for hotels. Many hotel chains in China are interested in the project and started a strategic partnership with the company, including Huazhu Hotel Group Ltd, Shanghai Hengshan (Group) Corp., Greentree Inns Hotel Group, Home Inns Hotel Group, Shanghai Jin Jiang International Hotels (Group) Company Limited, and Shanghai Donghu (Group) Co.
Currently, Shanghai Liming is primarily targeted on its core product front-desk robots. Subsidiary products include robots for delivery and security robots. These robots are intelligent, meaning customers can talk to them, show them documents for verification, pay to them during check-out, and so on. The use of such robots would fasten hotel operation, enhance customer satisfaction, and reduce management costs. The AI-powered system will accept phone calls from hotel guests with various housekeeping requests. These technologies may sound like they’ve been taken from a science fiction movie, but the future is here the test of front desk robots already started this month at Home Inns, Hanting Hotel, and Green Tree Inns, with the official launch being scheduled for autumn.