Video | How AI and virtual reality will drive future hotels and tourism: the latest from Fitur tourism fair
Hotels will make use of VR and AI to determine guests’ tastes as they check in, monitor their movements inside the hotel, and attempt to get them to pay for additional products. VR will also be a key part of the future tourist experience
A hotel room that automatically adjusts to the tastes of each guest and virtual reality headsets as brochures: the tourism sector is starting to embrace new technologies, hoping to benefit from lucrative personal data.
In a prototype of the hotel of the future on display at Madrid’s Fitur tourism fair, there were no receptionists, and customers were checked in via a mirror equipped with facial recognition.
Once the client is identified, the room adapts itself automatically to the demands made during reservation: temperature, lighting, or Picasso or Van Gogh in the digital frames hanging on the walls.
“Technology will allow us to know what the client needs before he even knows he wants it,” says Alvaro Carrillo de Albornoz, head of Spain’s Hotel Technology Institute, which promotes innovation in the sector.
Futuristic flat where hologram butler follows you to bathroom and tells you if you’re not drinking enough
Some hotels already offer some of these experiences at a more basic level.
But the room prototype put on show by French technology consultancy Altran, aimed at luxury hotels, has incorporated cutting-edge speech recognition technology, allowing, for instance, a guest to order a pizza in 40 languages.
“Even the lock is intelligent – it opens and closes via the WhatsApp app on the client’s phone,” says Carlos Mendez, head of innovation at Altran.
The mattress is equipped with sensors and records the movements of those sleeping, which could prompt hotel staff to offer them a coffee when they wake up.