Panasonic and IBM to develop digital concierge for hospitality industry

Panasonic and IBM are working together on a digital concierge service to enhance consumer experiences and expectations while traveling.

The Panasonic Digital Concierge applies Watson and IBM Cloud to a digital mirror designed for hotels and other hospitality industry customers such as museums or airports, for example.

Using the digital mirror, hotel guests can have a spoken dialog with Panasonic’s Digital Concierge to obtain a host of information about the hotel and its services, entertainment and shopping opportunities, transportation, weather, and other topics related to their stay.

“Panasonic has identified a need for this and several other kinds of connected solutions in the hospitality industry,” said Yasuji Enokido, president of Panasonic Corporation’s AVC Networks Company. “Working with IBM, we plan to further implement our connected solutions vision while making use of Watson intelligence to provide end-users with more natural cognitive functionality as well as richer feature sets.”

Panasonic and IBM are also extending their collaboration to applications for the Panasonic-developed LinkRay. This technology enables users to automatically receive content from digital signage or light source by merely pointing a LinkRay app-equipped mobile device at such a source. Integrated with hospitality applications in customers’ mobile phones, this enables a whole range of new opportunities to enhance consumer experiences around location based services and content consumption through the cloud.

“IBM Watson gets to truly know the individual and provides highly personalized experiences and recommendations,” said Bruce Anderson, Global Managing Director, IBM Electronics Industry. “Together with Panasonic we are bringing the power of cognitive to the hospitality industry to introduce a new level of customer service and further brand loyalty.”

© Asia Travel Tips