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MIND AND MACHINE

Your next hotel room may be smarter than you

Tired? Tell your hotel room you’re “going to sleep,” and it does the rest.

Your next hotel room may be smarter than you

[Photo: courtesy of InterContinental]

BY Melissa Locker0 minute read

InterContinental Hotels has teamed up with Baidu to create Smart Rooms fueled by artificial intelligence. The rooms don’t require an app or a special button. Instead guests at InterContinental Beijing Sanlitun and InterContinental Guangzhou Exhibition Centre can do things like tell their room they are “going to sleep,” and the room will recognize the phrase and know what to do with the information.

While it can’t tuck you into bed yet, it will shut the curtains and turn off the lights in the room.

Thanks to voice control technology, guests can just tell the room that they want the lights dimmed, the room a little warmer, the music a little softer, and order up some champagne and oysters, keeping their hands free for whatever they want.

There are only two hotels equipped with the AI Smart Rooms for now, but InterContinental Hotels plans to roll out the smart service to a total of 100 AI-powered suites across China within the year.

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InterContinental isn’t the only brand rushing to embrace technology in the hopes of wowing business travelers and wooing millennials. Marriott is piloting a new facial recognition check-in program and high-tech showers, while Hilton is taking a phone-based approach to smart rooms.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melissa Locker is a writer and world renowned fish telepathist. More


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