The era of hotel check-in with facial recognition technology is becoming a thing of the past.
Recently, hotels in cities like Shanghai and Hangzhou have adjusted their check-in policies and no longer require guests to 'mandatory facial recognition'. Sina Tech found that in Beijing, hotels such as Hilton Hampton Hotel, All Seasons Hotel, Hanting Hotel, Beijing St. Regis Hotel, and Beijing Golden Tulip Sheraton Hotel no longer require 'facial recognition' for check-in.
Hotel staff said, 'The instruction to no longer require 'facial recognition' for check-in was issued by the public security department recently, as many users have reported violations of personal portrait and privacy rights.'
Behind the use of facial recognition for hotel check-ins, various companies that provide facial recognition equipment and platform systems have long formed a large business chain. This policy adjustment will also affect the interests of these companies. As the major provider of facial recognition technology in the facial recognition business, Alipay may be affected. Recently, there has been a large number of postings on the Xian Yu platform selling Alipay facial recognition devices...
In Beijing, all brands under Huazhu Group, including All Seasons Hotel, Hanting Hotel, Orange Crystal, Mejue Hotel, and Yado Hotel, have all canceled 'mandatory facial recognition' for check-ins. In addition, many hotels under Hilton Hampton Hotel, Beijing St. Regis Hotel, and Beijing Golden Tulip Sheraton Hotel have also canceled 'mandatory facial recognition' for check-ins.
If you forget to bring your ID card, you can submit the information by scanning the QR code provided by the public security office at the front desk for verification and then check-in. According to the hotel staff, 'This policy has just started to be implemented recently, and our equipment has also been removed.'
Although some hotels still have facial recognition machines with cameras placed at the front desk, guests are no longer required to undergo facial recognition for check-in. In addition to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and other cities have also successively canceled the mandatory 'facial recognition' for hotel check-ins.
Regarding this, industry insiders commented, 'Hotel check-in with 'facial recognition' was never legislated, nor did it become a departmental regulation, and there has never been any written regulations in the national hotel industry. Generally speaking, it was all based on imitation among different regions. Therefore, when breaking this common practice, various regions have full autonomy and this autonomy should be respected.'
Legal professionals also stated, 'Facial recognition is just one of the methods to verify the identity of guests, not a necessary means. According to the relevant provisions of China's Personal Information Protection Law, if facial information is to be collected, a series of conditions must be met - separate consent must be obtained, necessary protection measures must be taken, the processing method must be informed to the guest, and a personal information protection impact assessment must be completed.'
Interestingly, since hotel check-in using facial recognition was never legislated, nor a necessary means of check-in, why did the practice of 'mandatory facial recognition' prevail in hotels for a long time, even making everyone think it was 'indispensable'?
In fact, as early as 2017, companies like Tencent and Alibaba applied facial recognition technology to the hotel industry, introducing new ways of facial recognition check-ins, payments, etc. Among them, the 'Future Hotel' jointly launched by Fliggy and Alipay, as well as the 'WeChat Ecological Hotel' jointly launched by Tencent with Elong and Zhu Zhe, are the most representative.
As early as August 2017, according to data released by Fliggy's Future Hotel, the number of hotels operated by its agents had exceeded 20,000, serving 100,000 room nights per day. In November 2019, a message revealed by the WeChat Hotel and Scenic Industry Operation Team showed that at that time, 90% of the hotels in China had also joined the WeChat ecosystem. Driven by the two giants, in most first and second-tier cities, 'facial recognition is required for hotel check-ins' has become a must for every hotel.
Now, with Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and other cities successively implementing policies to ban 'mandatory facial recognition', the widely popular facial recognition check-in method in the hotel industry may come to an end. Currently, a batch of hotels that adopted facial recognition terminal devices such as Wanda, Zhong'an, Huashi, Vovatu, Blue Enchantress, and Hikvision will be the first to be affected. In addition, platform companies represented by Alipay and WeChat Pay will also be affected.
A facial recognition payment device agent revealed to Sina Tech that when promoting facial recognition payments in the hotel industry, Alipay had introduced a large number of merchant incentive policies and self-developed facial recognition payment device 'Qingtong,' investing over 3 billion yuan to promote the deployment of facial recognition devices. Currently, there are still many facial recognition solutions for the hotel industry being promoted on Alipay's official website. However, with the cancellation of mandatory facial recognition in the hotel industry, these businesses will also be affected.
Sina Tech found that there is a large amount of second-hand information on Xian Yu, Xiao Hong Shu, and other platforms about the resale of Alipay's 'Qingtong' facial recognition devices. The selling price of the facial recognition devices, which were previously priced between 1,000 and 40,000 yuan, now ranges from 200 to 500 yuan for second-hand sales, with some reselling prices even as low as 10%. Some individual recycling businesses revealed that due to the simplicity of the system of some 'Qingtong' facial recognition devices, they can only run the initial software, which makes them very unpopular in the second-hand market, with a recycling price as low as 50 yuan/device.
According to the aforementioned facial recognition payment industry personnel speaking to Sina Tech, 'By using facial recognition for check-in, users can have a more 'technological' check-in experience and increase check-in sales, saving labor costs for hotels. By guiding users to use facial recognition to further obtain user information, turning users into hotel members, they can have more interaction in subsequent consumption processes and generate more value.'
However, in this process, when users agree to facial recognition, they also authorize and agree to some potential advertisements or other service recommendations from the merchant, which actually implies the permitted use of information or personal privacy by third parties, but these permitted organizations are often undisclosed and not informed by the hotel. 'Therefore, it may foster more data abuse and personal privacy leaks.'
In the past two years, with the rapid development of the new generation of AI technology, AI face swapping, AI voice theft, and other technologies are rapidly becoming new forms of fraud. According to a set of data provided by Rui Lai Intelligence, a provider of AI infrastructure and solutions, from 2020 to 2022, there were a total of 5 AI fraud cases in China; and by the end of 2023, AI fraud cases have blossomed in many parts of the country, with at least 16 cases already occurring. It can be foreseen that the number of such cases will continue to increase in 2024.
'If hotels can freely collect facial data, once these collected data are accidentally leaked, the potential threat would be enormous.' In communication with Sina Tech, Huang Lin, a member of the China Artificial Intelligence Society and a business partner at And Jun Consulting, said, 'It can be said that the development of AGI has accelerated this risk.'
In fact, to regulate the application of facial recognition technology, the Cyberspace Administration of China released the 'Regulations on the Security Management of Facial Recognition Technology Application (Trial) (Consultation Draft)' in August last year, which clearly stipulates that facial recognition technology should not be used to process facial information unless it has specific purposes and sufficient necessity, and strict protection measures are taken. In addition, the forthcoming 'Implementation Regulations of the Consumer Rights Protection Law' also stipulate that operators providing goods or services shall not excessively collect consumers' personal information.
In Huang Lin's view, the release of the 'Consultation Draft' has 'the principle of minimal use, voluntary compliance, and minimal storage.' The cancellation of mandatory facial recognition for hotel check-ins not only emphasizes the importance of personal privacy protection but also optimizes and adjusts social governance means, 'reflecting efforts to seek a balance between public safety, commercial interests, and individual rights.'