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| Bae Cheol-gi, left, a senior vice president who is charge of global business development at KT, shakes hands with MVI CEO Anke Gill at Kuala Lumpur, Friday, during a signing ceremony for their business cooperation on AI hotel services. / Courtesy of KT |
By Jun Ji-hye
KT will sell its tech-centric hotel service offering artificial intelligence-based (AI) features around the clock to hotels in the Philippines, the company said Sunday, noting that the service will be expanded to hotels in Singapore, Dubai and Guam afterward.
Toward that end, the Korean telecommunications company signed a business cooperation contract with MVI at Kuala Lumpur, Friday.
MVI is a Hong Kong-based company offering internet protocol television services to hotel chains in 18 countries in Asia and the Middle East.
KT is pushing to make inroads into the global AI hotel market with the Genie Cube platform.
The Genie Cube is a platform that combines KT's AI hotel service, the Giga Genie Hotel, with MVI's IPTV services for hotels.
The platform enables guests to control lighting and IPTVs as well as air conditioning and heating through voice commands or a touch screen display. Guests can also request amenities such as bath gels.
The Genie Cube platform also offers more enhanced security for sensitive personal information, and is capable of providing customized systems in accordance with situations of each hotel, according to KT.
KT and MVI will install the Genie Cube AI hotel platform on a trial basis for MVI's clients in the Philippines in November, and continue to carry out joint marketing activities to expand the service to more MVI's clients in Singapore, Dubai and Guam.
"After about a year of development, we are now able showcase the Genie Cube AI hotel platform on the global market," said Kim Young-woo, a senior vice president who heads the Global Business Development Unit at KT. "We expect KT's AI hotel service to expand into the global market, beginning with the installation of the service in Cebu, the Philippines."
MVI CEO Anke Gill noted the Genie Cube will become an important platform that can be applied to next-generation hotels and casinos.
In July last year, KT opened an AI-powered Novotel Ambassador Hotel and Residence built at the site of its former Euljiro office in Jung-gu. Since then, the firm has offered the AI hotel service to more hotels here, including the Baymond Hotel in Busan.
