Periodic Reporting for period 1 - YooniK (Seamless Guest Experiences through Biometrics in Things)
Reporting period: 2019-08-01 to 2020-01-31
In an extremely competitive hospitality industry worth $570b in 2017, hotels spend vast amounts of time and money trying to know their customer, provide them with great experience, protect their security and safeguard their privacy. Still, after providing very sensitive personal information, a guest coming for the tenth time after a long tiring journey will still be treated as an unknown customer, be kindly asked to wait in long lines to check-in or have breakfast and offered upselling or ancillary of no interest to her. Moreover, access cards are not practical, can be passed to unauthorized people, and hotels’ legal duty of keeping accurate, trustable and auditable records of the identity of their guests still rely on untrained staff to check their guests’ documents and identities. This poses security threats and gives a false sense of security to society.
Kickstarted in 2019 by entrepreneurial individuals who have put their combined experience to work, YooniK is set to deliver the next big global tech disruption: Biometrics in Things(TM). Starting in the hospitality industry, we believe to be on a glazing path to become the de facto standard of a trusted Hospitality Identity, providing immersive and seamless guest experiences which are truly unique. YooniK allows guests to interact on- the-move with intelligent IoT devices to prove who they are and acquire services or be granted access. BiTTM technology can be embedded and made ubiquitous in essentially any environment. Whether you want to seamlessly check into a hotel room and access the buffet breakfast lounge, pay for goods with a loyalty card, pick up your medicines at the pharmacy or enter your rental car: just face the camera and go! Powered by a strong belief in data privacy, we have additionally put very hard work into a novel proprietary Privacy with BenefitsTM technology which goes well-beyond GDPR to ensure privacy by design while keeping all the tailored and contextualized benefits one may have from sharing data.
Backed up by an innovation partnership with Intel and recognized by major international hospitality players representing 1% of the hotel rooms available in the world, our company is setting the ground for integrating the YooniK technology in field trials with a trusted core of world-renowned innovation hospitality partners and disrupting the market with a world-premiere roll-out to operational scenarios in thousands of rooms by the end of 2020. Don’t you want to check into a YooniK hotel already?
The goals of this feasibility study were to: (1) analyze the market of biometrics in hospitality in depth, (2) refine the YooniK product concept and business model, (3) deploy an MVP in field trials in hotel chains in order to validate the YooniK concept as well as the associated business innovation opportunity. Furthermore, we expected to (4) showcase the obtained results in dedicated industry forums side by side with industry experts, academic experts and hi-tech providers and (5) setup a YooniK Think Tank as an Advisory Board of the project.
Kickstarted in 2019 by entrepreneurial individuals who have put their combined experience to work, YooniK is set to deliver the next big global tech disruption: Biometrics in Things(TM). Starting in the hospitality industry, we believe to be on a glazing path to become the de facto standard of a trusted Hospitality Identity, providing immersive and seamless guest experiences which are truly unique. YooniK allows guests to interact on- the-move with intelligent IoT devices to prove who they are and acquire services or be granted access. BiTTM technology can be embedded and made ubiquitous in essentially any environment. Whether you want to seamlessly check into a hotel room and access the buffet breakfast lounge, pay for goods with a loyalty card, pick up your medicines at the pharmacy or enter your rental car: just face the camera and go! Powered by a strong belief in data privacy, we have additionally put very hard work into a novel proprietary Privacy with BenefitsTM technology which goes well-beyond GDPR to ensure privacy by design while keeping all the tailored and contextualized benefits one may have from sharing data.
Backed up by an innovation partnership with Intel and recognized by major international hospitality players representing 1% of the hotel rooms available in the world, our company is setting the ground for integrating the YooniK technology in field trials with a trusted core of world-renowned innovation hospitality partners and disrupting the market with a world-premiere roll-out to operational scenarios in thousands of rooms by the end of 2020. Don’t you want to check into a YooniK hotel already?
The goals of this feasibility study were to: (1) analyze the market of biometrics in hospitality in depth, (2) refine the YooniK product concept and business model, (3) deploy an MVP in field trials in hotel chains in order to validate the YooniK concept as well as the associated business innovation opportunity. Furthermore, we expected to (4) showcase the obtained results in dedicated industry forums side by side with industry experts, academic experts and hi-tech providers and (5) setup a YooniK Think Tank as an Advisory Board of the project.
The work performed for the duration of the feasibility study include:
(1) We have conducted a market study which gave us the strategic direction informing our product roadmap and operational plan.
(2) We have refined and pivoted the product concept, value proposition and business model accordingly into a market facing offer. We have defined a 12 month product roadmap and devised a 5 year business and operational plan.
(3) Our YooniK Face and YooniK ID MVPs have been deployed with full cloud plus edge deployment in highly successful trials in three use cases in a 5* Accor property – Fairmont Ajman – where a total of 26,113 face identifications were carried out in uncontrolled conditions, including low lighting, and the accuracy rate of the algorithm in 1:N identification was 99.98%, confirming our theoretical and advertised accuracy.
(4) We have attended 4 large industry tradeshows/conferences and raised extensive awareness, gathered important feedback and, most importantly, were able to secure the first prize in one hospitality competition (Accor Pitch Contest) and achieved first place in the voting for the TechOvation Award by HTNG. Our LinkedIn profile also gathered relevant momentum and in the period of 4 months gained almost 400 followers and totalled over 30 000 views/impressions and 1800 likes overall. We have a web presence marketing our company and product which has gathered a similar number of views and subscribers.
(5) We have setup a YooniK Think Tank with 5 acclaimed and proven experts in hospitality trends and market, hospitality business, startup coaching and business development.
(1) We have conducted a market study which gave us the strategic direction informing our product roadmap and operational plan.
(2) We have refined and pivoted the product concept, value proposition and business model accordingly into a market facing offer. We have defined a 12 month product roadmap and devised a 5 year business and operational plan.
(3) Our YooniK Face and YooniK ID MVPs have been deployed with full cloud plus edge deployment in highly successful trials in three use cases in a 5* Accor property – Fairmont Ajman – where a total of 26,113 face identifications were carried out in uncontrolled conditions, including low lighting, and the accuracy rate of the algorithm in 1:N identification was 99.98%, confirming our theoretical and advertised accuracy.
(4) We have attended 4 large industry tradeshows/conferences and raised extensive awareness, gathered important feedback and, most importantly, were able to secure the first prize in one hospitality competition (Accor Pitch Contest) and achieved first place in the voting for the TechOvation Award by HTNG. Our LinkedIn profile also gathered relevant momentum and in the period of 4 months gained almost 400 followers and totalled over 30 000 views/impressions and 1800 likes overall. We have a web presence marketing our company and product which has gathered a similar number of views and subscribers.
(5) We have setup a YooniK Think Tank with 5 acclaimed and proven experts in hospitality trends and market, hospitality business, startup coaching and business development.
In all, this feasibility study has allowed us to conclude that:
(1) Using facial recognition in the hospitality industry is technically viable and sound and we have progressed in the state of art of facial recognition to achieve an accuracy of 99.98% in real operational scenarios in hotels.
(2) There is enough market traction for the concept of applying facial recognition to the hospitality sector to become a feasible and sustainable business.
(3) We learned relevant lessons that informed our product design and market landscape allowing us to take several key strategic decisions to ensure a viable financial route.
(4) We confirmed privacy is absolutely key for guests and hotels and we should be exploring a totally disruptive approach to privacy which, while ensuring the traditional GDPR compliance, which can provide full peace of mind to everyone. We have devised such concept and will implement in the future as part of our roadmap.
The potential impacts in the long run include:
(1) Economic impact in companies involved in the project may total 80M€ of increased financial returns, equivalent to 290 jobs.
(2) Societal impact will be a new form of privacy-first biometrics whereby customers can audit and ensure full privacy compliance of their face data.
(3) Once the concept is rolled-out, there will be a considerable impact on time savings, increased security and strict privacy compliance of over 8M guests per year staying in these YooniK rooms, reflecting on increased quality of life, privacy and civil liberties protection, productivity and/or peace of mind.
(1) Using facial recognition in the hospitality industry is technically viable and sound and we have progressed in the state of art of facial recognition to achieve an accuracy of 99.98% in real operational scenarios in hotels.
(2) There is enough market traction for the concept of applying facial recognition to the hospitality sector to become a feasible and sustainable business.
(3) We learned relevant lessons that informed our product design and market landscape allowing us to take several key strategic decisions to ensure a viable financial route.
(4) We confirmed privacy is absolutely key for guests and hotels and we should be exploring a totally disruptive approach to privacy which, while ensuring the traditional GDPR compliance, which can provide full peace of mind to everyone. We have devised such concept and will implement in the future as part of our roadmap.
The potential impacts in the long run include:
(1) Economic impact in companies involved in the project may total 80M€ of increased financial returns, equivalent to 290 jobs.
(2) Societal impact will be a new form of privacy-first biometrics whereby customers can audit and ensure full privacy compliance of their face data.
(3) Once the concept is rolled-out, there will be a considerable impact on time savings, increased security and strict privacy compliance of over 8M guests per year staying in these YooniK rooms, reflecting on increased quality of life, privacy and civil liberties protection, productivity and/or peace of mind.