Mitsui Leverages NEC Facial Recognition for Hotel Check-in and Payments

NEC is trying to improve the hotel experience through a new partnership with Mitsui Fudosan and Mitsui Fudosan Hotel Management. The company will specifically be providing facial recognition technology for Mitsui’s new Sequence brand, which is being introduced as a Smart Hospitality Service that leverages biometrics at multiple hotel checkpoints.

To that end, Sequence will allow guests at select Mitsui hotels to check in with only a facial recognition scan, using tablets installed at stations in the hotel lobby. Once they are checked in, they will then be able to use facial recognition to gain access to their rooms and other hotel facilities. Sequence will also enable naked payments at hotel establishments, allowing guests to authorize transactions with another scan.

Sequence will be introduced at three Mitsui hotels over the course of the next year, beginning with Miyashita Park in June. It will then expand to Kyoto Gojo in July before making its way to an unnamed Suidobashi hotel that is scheduled to open in the fall. The Miyashita Park location will only offer facial recognition during check-in, while Kyoto Gogo and Suidobashi will offer a more comprehensive Sequence experience.

Guests hoping to take advantage of the service will need to register their facial information before arriving at the hotel, and link that information to their reservation. Sequence itself is built with NEC’s NeoFace engine and Bio-IDiom technology. NeoFace was declared to be the most accurate facial recognition algorithm in a recent round of NIST testing.

NEC is eventually hoping to extend the Smart Hospitality Service to the airport, thereby allowing travelers to check in from the airport and get their baggage sent directly to the hotel. The company’s facial recognition tech has already been installed at multiple airports in Japan, and is being used in a Star Alliance program for frequent flyers.

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January 28, 2020 – by Eric Weiss