You Can Check In, Enter Your Room And Order Food Through WeChat At This Hotel In China

China’s biggest messaging platform, WeChat, decided to team up with InterContinental to open a smart hotel in Shanghai where there is no human assistance. Customers can book their rooms, check in via the app and also use their smartphones as room keys. After completing their reservations, once arrive at the hotel, travelers’ identities can be identified through facial recognition and then they can get their digital key card. The hotel is built 88 feet underground; however, it is still well-connected to the internet to offer quick services.

Ever since 2014, WeChat together with Tencent, its parent company, have been on a process of developing smart hotel experiences. To offer even better experience, for faster identity checks, the company decided to added facial recognition.

Commonly in China hotels, customers are required to take a mugshot, have their government ID scanned and copied before entering their rooms. With regulators enforce a firewall, Internet access offered by China hotels are under strict control. Free VPNs have been stopped being offered by many Western hotel chains.

Travelers can do basically anything via WeChat: from making payments, setting the room’s air conditioning system, adjusting curtains and lighting to their preferences to ordering room service. In the app, in the customer data, customers can find breakfast vouchers. Then, at dining area, they just need to scan their face. If travelers prefer an executive suite, a 24-hour butler service will be offered. After finishing their stay, check-outs are also made via the app.

WeChat has been used in many different areas of commerce in China. Restaurant and shopping mall are the two first aspects of this integration. The collaboration with InterContinental indicates that WeChat has ventured in the hotel field.

Partnership between hotel chain and technology companies like Alibaba and Baidu has become common in the past year. With WeChat offering numerous features like catching a cab and gaming, it is still the most popular app in the country, even though Baidu may specialized in smart speakers and Alibaba may have superior facial recognition and robots technology. Last week, WeChat’s parent company, Tencent has signed a deal with Shangrila, so it is possible that many smart hotels with the in-app features will be opened soon.