The time is ripe for technology to bridge the information gap between newly arrived travelers, their holiday accommodation, and their chosen tourist destination. Enter the Robot Travel Agency, a product of collaboration between Singapore-based Robot-as-a-Service provider Guardforce AI (GFAI) and Taiwanese tech company Riversoft, whose Chairman, CEO Alex Kuo tells us more.
Please tell us about the Robot Travel Agency (RTA). What is it, and how will it impact the travel industry?
The Robot Travel Agency (RTA) is a joint development between Riversoft and GFAI.
It is designed to provide convenient and customised travel solutions for tourists, hotels, and local agencies.
From our market research, we understand that tourists tend to use mobile phones to plan and purchase their trip activities after they arrive at the hotel. More often than not, they tend to use online platforms to search for recommended info and can get overwhelmed by tons of information.
So, we are developing the RTA, which focuses on the following features:
- Hotel check-in/out system
- Recommendations and resources for local activities and deals
- Live bot conversation services to help customise tourists’ trip planning.
When tourists arrive at the hotels, they can check in through the RTA, which is efficient and less time-consuming especially when the hotel is packed. After checking in at the RTA, it will directly recommend local travel products and allow travellers to scan the QR code and then browse and order with their own phones. Tourists can also place orders directly through the RTA and get an itinerary right away. Meanwhile, the lower display of the RTA can also be used for advertisements promoting local events. In addition, if the tourists want to spend a bit of time browsing the products, they can simply scan the QR code to enter into a conversation with the official account of GFAI (in Line, WeChat, or other social platforms) and get customised recommendations.
We believe that this combination of robots and travel services is a new innovative robot model and has great potential.
What trends or changes in the travel industry inspired moving online travel agency (OTA) services to Robot (RTA)?
Local travel agencies certainly have diverse resources for local activities and tickets. However, despite having competitive products to offer, due to the lack of marketing capabilities, it is a challenge for local agencies to reach their target customers – tourists. RTA is a collaborative product designed to solve these problems. For travel agents, listing their products on RTA is like having a travel agency in every hotel. RTA automatically recommends these products and services to tourists who are checking in through the RTA. In addition to the original functions of GFAI concierge robots, which can help hotel keepers with security features such as biometric identification, check-in, and check-out, RTA adds an additional revenue stream through tourism products, which benefits local travel agencies, tourists, and hotels.
How did the partnership between Riversoft and GFAI start? Please tell us briefly about GFAl.
Guardforce AI (GFAI) is a Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) provider that manages approximately 6,000 robots globally. GFAI RaaS solutions are focused on providing services to several service-related businesses, such as hotels and restaurants. Most of the deployments are in countries where technologies and machines are widely used for assisting daily tasks. Therefore, we believe that once the business model is tested and adjusted, the promotion of RTA will be fast and smooth.
Riversoft is a tech-specialised company with no relation to hardware equipment, while Guardforce AI complements that. In addition to establishing a travel itinerary purchasing platform that builds in the Guardforce AI concierge robots, Riversoft also provides an NLP semantic analysis-based chatbot, which is used in various social software like Line, WhatsApp, WeChat, etc. Also, Riversoft provides an e-commerce system where tourists can directly purchase products on RTA. After that, tourists can designate locations like hotels or airports, making shopping faster and easier.
What pain point is RTA looking to solve in the travel industry? What kind of innovative services can RTA offer for travel service operators and travelers?
Nowadays, many audio devices are installed in each hotel room designed to allow travelers to use semantic analysis technology to control in-room appliances or to answer their questions and recommend products. It is a convenient way to provide services by speaking but because of the voice-related technology, it leads to privacy-related problems. However, RTA is designed to minimise this concern.
For travelers, the initial point of contact for RTA is in the hotel lobby. After checking in at the RTA, it will directly recommend local travel products and allow travelers to scan the QR code and then browse and order with their own phones. They can find the most localised travel products and operate them on their own phones, which conform to modern usage habits. For hotels, instead of installing devices room by room, they can install one RTA in the lobby or one on each floor and get additional revenue through RTA tourism products. For local travel agencies, listing their product on the RTA is an advertising platform and a direct sales channel for travelers. With the launch of RTA, we hope to define a brand-new travel service robot.
The RTA is a much-needed innovation during this time of contactless travel bookings. What do you think is its most significant commercial advantage? What is the profit model of Riversoft and the travel agencies in this new ecosystem?
A similar concept to the RTA would be OTA and online travel product websites, such as KKDay and Klook. The difference is that RTA is designed to integrate location-based tour itineraries into its platform. Tourists no longer have to search for itineraries by themselves and don’t have to be bogged down by tons of information. In addition, RTA can recommend the most relevant and highly rated itineraries based on the traveler’s location through the LBS system, tag the traveler with categories based on the content they viewed, and recommend products that may be of interest. Finally, RTA can connect to social software to initiate diversified remarketing.
For us, revenues can be generated whenever tourists purchase products, via the advertising on the robot, and also the hotel check-in services from the RTA.
Where do you plan to implement GFAI RTA? How much value do you expect to generate from this new service?
We have chosen Hong Kong and Taiwan as initial sites for proof of concept. Hong Kong has a high population density, and is recovering from the pandemic, and Hong Kongese are familiar with using robotics to support daily tasks. In addition, GFAI has a local operation in Hong Kong (GFAI is headquartered in Singapore), which makes it convenient to manage the project.
Taiwan is the second POC location for similar reasons. Riversoft Ltd. is based in Taiwan. The local government is keeping relatively good control of the pandemic while the travel restrictions are lifted. This means that both inbound and outbound tourism are recovering relatively fast. In addition, robotics and kiosk services have been applied to convenience stores so it’s not an unfamiliar business model to the public. In 2007, when robotic services were first introduced to the market, the total revenue reached approximately- US$20 million. The market acceptance of robotics is relatively higher and we believe that our RTA service has similar potential as well.
The next target locations for RTA are Japan and Thailand, for similar reasons.
Related articles:
- What’s Next for TravelTech? Insights from Riversoft CEO, Alex Kuo
- Riversoft Makes the Connection: From Travel Services to Medical Data Via NLP
- Payke: High Tech to Enrich the Japan Experience
Executive Profile
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