Category: Interview

An interview with Mr. Kenneth Zhang, President of PARAMOUNT BEAUTY

PARAMOUNT BEAUTY was founded in 2004. After 18 years’ stable development and industry study, it has launched the international standard “Soul Spa System”, a comprehensive and ground-breaking system that provides beauty salons and spas with holistic solutions to help them fulfill all-round upgrades and stand out among the market competition. The creator of this highly praised system is Mr. Kenneth Zhang, the President of PARAMOUNT BEAUTY. He led his team to carry out profound and wide research and exploration before finally launching the Soul Spa System.

Mr. Kenneth Zhang is not only the founder and leader of PARAMOUNT BEAUTY, but also a marketing strategy consultant and a life instructor with 15 years’ experience of giving guidance to senior trainers. He has developed a range of courses including “Reverse Thinking Marketing Mode”, “Excellent Leadership”, “Position Obligations”, “Training for Chief Operating Officer”, and “Instruction Style and Corporate Cultural Innovation”. SpaChina interviewed Kenneth.

Please introduce PARAMOUNT BEAUTY to us, including the foundation story, development track, current business, and etc.

Founded in 2004, the headquarters of PARAMOUNT BEAUTY is in Shenzhen, China. After 18 years of continual development, we are now positioned as the Soul Spa Standard System provider. With Soul Spa System, we design different courses and training programs to offer spas holistic upgrade solutions and to enhance their core competitiveness. The result is they will establish a standard system that is 5 years ahead of their competitors.

PARAMOUNT BEAUTY carried out in-depth talks with senior spa consultants in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand before finally forming the professional and rigorous Soul Spa System with a total investment of over 100 million yuan. Before the pandemic, PARAMOUNT BEAUTY sent staff abroad to visit and conduct research at five-star hotels and high-end clubs for 3 months every year. Domestically, PARAMOUNT BEAUTY carries out field research at more than 5 spas every month. Each quarter, a 7-day internal technique PK is conducted. Over the past 18 years, PARAMOUNT BEAUTY has organized over 260 study tours both abroad and home for over 100,000 senior executives.

Why did you develop Soul Spa System? Who are your target clients? What kind of solutions do you offer to the clients? Are there any cases to share with us?

When I personally stepped to the operation level of spas, I realized there was a lack of standards and attention to detail. The days when spas could attract customers and make a profit by merely selling products have gone. It was at that time I made a decision to develop a holistic solution to help spas improve their competitiveness. So Soul Spa System was born.

I share my research results and operation experience of the past 25 years with the industry and am dedicated to helping spas which desire to capture the local market enhance their regional competitiveness from five aspects: strategy, program, service, setting and sales.

I’d like to share a case with you. Not long ago, a beauty club in Shanghai was attracted by our Soul Spa System. We carried out many discussions via the phone and we also went to their site for a further exploration. Then the club owner, together with their management level personnel, came to join our Soul Spa courses and adopted our comprehensive Soul Spa solutions. They also introduced our Ericson products into their club. Then we conducted an intensive staff training for their club. The result is that, not only their brand quality has been upgraded, an overall improvement is obviously seen in personnel techniques, professionalism, services and procedure standards.

Please talk more about Soul Spa courses. Who participates in the courses? What can be learned from the course?

The Soul Spa course system is comprised of three levels. For the first level, also the basic, we developed the “professional technique service” course. For the second level, we have the “operation and execution guidance” course and “mentor talk” course. Then for the supreme third level, we have the “strategic design” course and “study tour for CEOs”.

All our courses are end-customer oriented and center around the idea of how to improve customers’ satisfaction, and increase their repurchase rate and the willingness to introduce the spa to others. All the courses keep a high consistency in the content and goals. We also require the spa owners to bring their team members together to the courses. This will make it more efficient for the spas to have upgrades systematically.

Below are the benefits they can reap from the courses.

1. Organization upgrade

We suggest advanced systems, mechanisms, and policies to the spa so that they can operate in a more autonomous way. It will save millions of management costs for the spa owners and improve working efficiency.

2. Product upgrade

We do reasonable planning of competitive product categories for the spas, and help them to create star products and enhance customer repurchasing.

3. Service upgrade

We help the spas to comprehensively improve their setting so as to more effectively touch the customers through the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. We teach the spas how to deliver services that can satisfy, surprise and touch the customers. As a result, the customers will have a higher satisfaction rate and be willing to introduce the spa to many others.

4. Setting upgrade

We offer guidance to the spas on cultural construction and brand image upgrade. We introduce sales tools for the front end departments and help them to do sales more effectively.

5. Marketing upgrade

We offer spas experiential marketing guidance for both online and offline settings so that they can attract more customers to come and stay. The spas will no longer be worried about their business performance.

You have recently launched the “employee partnership system”. Why did you introduce this system? What is the feedback from employees? How is the effect? Have you met any challenges during the process?

The core of enterprise reform lies in mechanism reform and structural reform. Concerning the personnel structure reform, we ask all the management level associates to go to the front line and serve the customers themselves. At the beginning, many employees had the feeling of uncertainty and had some worries. But this is very natural. When a new policy comes out, there must be someone who would wait and see, some would actively follow and some others would choose to leave.

But a month after the launch of the reforms, many employees see the benefits. In the second month, some employees got twice or three times higher salary then before. So more and more employees are willing to follow the new mechanism. During the pandemic last year, 40% of our employee partners got twice to four times higher salary. This is quite a lot. Meanwhile, their abilities improve, they grow more quickly, and they do things more efficiently. As a result, the customers’ satisfaction also improves.

Traditional modes can no longer solve the challenges nowadays. So our company carries out reforms every year. After each reform, excellent employees become even more excellent. Both their abilities and salary increase. And the quality of the whole team improves.

How do you judge China’s spa industry today? Are there any aspects that need to be adjusted and improved? What advantages and disadvantages do we have compared to the advanced spa market abroad?

I think there is still room for China’s spa industry to improve. One of the reasons is that most spas are not directly managed by the boss. So either operational strategies or employees’ mindsets haven’t been so satisfactory.

In fact, spas can learn from beauty salons in terms of service delivery, customer management, techniques and product category planning. Spas need to know how to design a holistic service procedure based on the goal of increasing customers’ satisfaction and experience.

China’s spas can learn from overseas advanced spas in terms of standard, setting and style. But we do have advantages in product development, service delivery and techniques. For example, we have our time-honored Chinese healing techniques and profound health theories like The Inner Canon of Emperor Huangdi.

After the pandemic broke out, spa owners and operators suddenly understood the great importance of online services. However, it is undoubtedly a challenge to traditional service industries like spa, both the operators and ordinary staff. Do you have any experience or advice to share with us on this topic?

It’s true. Since the pandemic broke out, people have spent much more time online. And this tendency will surely continue.

People in traditional service industries are usually reluctant to change. However, there are also many spas which begin to lay out online services and get a mindset for data-based services. These spas will surely keep up with the trend of the future. So spas which haven’t begun the reform should act quickly.

Now is the best time for starting online services. The far-sighted ones have already begun. We will clearly see the difference in three to five years. 

What new needs can you see from the spa goers today? How do you see the development prospect of China’s spa industry? Does PARAMOUNT BEAUTY have any new plans to keep up with market trends?

In recent years, Chinese spa goers’ preferences and needs have changed. In the past, maybe they just wanted to seek relaxation in the spa, but now they wish to get real health benefits. After the pandemic, in particular, people’s health awareness has strongly increased. So traditional relaxing massages can no longer meet their needs. Furthermore, I can say today’s spa goers emphasize more on the cultural and spiritual content of the spa.

Targeting these two aspects, Soul Spa keeps adjusting its content with about 30% content renewal each year. Meanwhile, many spa-goers today have greater demand on spine care and aromatherapy. That’s why we have introduced Narogarden essential oil and Corpson spine care to the market.

Moreover, Soul Spa always pays attention to customers’ pursuit of ritual experience, and a unique setting. We work on these and endeavor to help the spas build their cultural content.

An interview with Mr. Tomonari Tai, Executive Assistant Manager at The Sukhothai Shanghai

In 2018, the contemporary lifestyle hotel The Sukhothai Shanghai opened in the heart of Shanghai within the HKRI Taikoo Hui. The traditional virtue of hospitality with a contemporary twist is complemented with meticulously designed facilities and hotel services to accommodate modern urbanities. Wellness is a main theme that threads through the Sukhothai experience and reaches its climax at The Retreat. In a peaceful and serene atmosphere, The Retreat makes guests feel its “uniqueness” through attention to detail, cordial personal services, holistic pampering, nourishing treatments and continual updates of programs according to the changing needs of the market.

Mr. Tomonari Tai, the Executive Assistant Manager at The Sukhothai Shanghai is Japanese with over 15 years of experience in the hospitality industry. He has worked for various luxury hotels under the brands of Hilton, Sofitel, Shangri-La and Ritz-Carlton. His footsteps cover three continents and include mainland China. He has undertaken different roles in hotels during the years and was promoted to Executive Assistant Manager, Rooms at The Ritz-Carlton Beijing, Financial Street before he joined The Sukhothai Shanghai. Tomonari is convinced that guests’ loyalty comes from their satisfaction to the services the hotel offers. So he always encourages his team members to actively interact with guests and carefully listen to their needs. He firmly believes that attention to detail is the key to success. Under his leadership, the team members, including the spa associates at The Retreat manage to bring many unforgettable experiences to the guests. SpaChina interviews Mr. Tomonari Tai on how to create a unique spa experience and carry out effective staff training. 

Please introduce The Sukhothai Shanghai and The Retreat to our readers.

Strategically located in the business and tourist hotspot of West Nanjing Road and Shimen Yi Road, The Sukhothai Shanghai is a contemporary design hotel that forms an integral part of the HKRI Taikoo Hui mixed-use complex, which also includes Grade-A office towers and a premium shopping mall. A member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, the hotel features 170 well-appointed guest rooms and 31 suites ranging from 44 to 172 square meters, and five inspiring lifestyle dining venues serving authentic modern cuisines and artisanal beverages, a state-of-the-art fitness studio complete with a 25-metre heated indoor pool, and a spa specializing in revitalizing wellness programs. Crafted for exquisite social and corporate events, conferences and exhibitions of all scales, the Grand Shanghai Ballroom along with six multi-purpose function rooms occupy a spacious area of 450 square meters, conveniently accessible from the main driveway and grand terrazzo staircase.

The Retreat is “A Place Apart” in the Heart of Shanghai to rejuvenate the body, mind and soul. The Retreat presents a series of Southeast Asian-inspired treatments to deliver a renewing experience to guests.

The Retreat’s logo combines the symbols of lotus and water, each containing its unique meaning. The lotus represents inner beauty and rebirth, and water symbolizes purity, fluidity and rhythms of life. The two combined forms a place of peace and serenity, the perfect haven from the hustle and bustle of city life.

What do you think are the essentials for a hotel spa to attract more guests and win in the market? How does The Retreat comply with these essentials? What are the results?

People including myself are much more conscious about wellness nowadays and information is overflowing due to advanced digital technology. For a hotel spa, it is essential to provide an experience for guests to nourish their mind, body and spirit, and not just a treatment or massage. For The Retreat, it is our commitment to offer a calming and peaceful setting for our guests to escape from the frantic pace of the city life. “Unique wellness journey that enlivens the senses and instills wellbeing” is a key for success in the market in addition to spreading out the right message to the right channel.

Uniqueness simply comes from people, quality and details under the right leadership. I am proud to share that our Spa and Fitness Manager has been part of The Sukhothai family since the pre-opening period. She has shown her full passion for Spa and shared her creativity to make The Retreat experience truly unique. For example, The Retreat Detox Massage, our signature treatment, draws on three cultures to deliver an intensely relaxing and calming experience and Lava Shell Deep Heat Relaxation, a deep massage therapy with the shape of the heated shell.

According to our business mix statistics, 60% of our guests are non-residential and The Retreat exceeded Q1 targets this year.

What does The Sukhothai care most about in spa personnel recruitment? What qualities do you require from spa staff? How do you carry out effective training for them?

Our purpose is “our guests” and not tasks. Thus, we strongly believe in the importance of “attitude” and “personality” that includes caring for others, being passionate about wellness, being positive, taking ownership and paying attention to details upon hiring. For therapists, skill testing will be conducted by the Spa and Fitness Manager.

A key factor in carrying out effective training is planning. Every time, our Spa and Fitness Manager spends tremendous time with the appointed brand trainers for preparation in order to ensure the training is productive. For example, most recently in leveraging our recent collaboration with Natura Bissé, The Retreat offering was refreshed in March 2021 to introduce five new treatments using its products that were uniquely designed for The Retreat. One week of intensive training was arranged for our spa associates early this year. The training contents included brand / product understanding, massage therapy techniques and the complete the whole journey. I personally witnessed it as being effective.

Furthermore, we encourage our associates to have a cross exposure to the only sister property in Bangkok prior to the pandemic period. One of our fully engaged therapists had the opportunity to spend two weeks in Spa Botanica to learn the timeless healing tradition of Thailand in 2019. The beauty of this cross exposure experience is that the therapist was so inspired by the experience and was excited to propose amending some steps of our Thai Massage with Herbal Compress after returning from Thailand. We found it extremely helpful to elevate the authentic wellness journey for our guests and appreciated her proactive involvement in the planning of work.

The Retreat is widely praised for its design and spa concept. Could you talk more on these two aspects? What is the guests’ feedback about them?

Located on the lower ground level, The Retreat comprises five private treatment suites — three single suites and two double suites, one equipped with a bathtub. Each configuration is designed as “an independent villa in a villa” to deliver bespoke wellness experiences to guests with varying needs.

A semi-private relaxation area with a wide range of books is situated in the center of The Retreat for our guests to enjoy a peaceful time after the treatment. At the reception area, ZEN Garden with natural daylight is reminiscent of a well of wellness to nourish your mind and spirit.

The concept of The Retreat is to take you on a holistic refined wellness journey through an indulgence and pampering experience with natural Asian inspired ingredients, unique healing elements and enhanced yet soothing treatment techniques. In addition to treatments shared earlier, Himalayan Pink Salt Body Treatment is a unique therapeutic massage with natural Himalayan crystal salt to balance both the positive ions with the negative ions and Tibetan Singing Bowls by Ms. Victoria Svyatenko who shares her passion for sound healing and sound therapy to teach the ways of balancing the body, mind, spirit and emotions.

Many of our guests greatly appreciate the wellness journey that they experience at The Retreat because of the “uniqueness” that is expertly guided by our spa associates. At the end of the day, it is all about people who show genuine care through providing a personal touch to make a difference in the market instead of hardware.

The Retreat also aims to deliver a holistic healing journey for the guests. What do you do concretely to bring a true renewal to guests’ body and mind?

We always educate our associates that spa is not just a massage. At The Retreat, we have intriguing additions planned into the design and in the execution of the treatments, the oil blends, the music, the experiential guest journey, the handpicked refreshments etc., allowing us to have full control on the service our expert team delivers. It is also flexible enough to make changes to adapt to the changing expectations of our clientele. Every procedure is detail-oriented, from the warm welcome at the lobby reception, to escorting the guest into the treatment room, to starting the treatment with a Thai herbal shoulder pad and foot ritual, and our treatments also come with herbal tea and snacks in different varieties served pre and post treatment. Every little detail shows genuine care and passion towards guests.

In addition to the spiritual healing already mentioned, what are the major needs and requirements of today’s spa consumers? What are the spa trends in China’s spa market today?

Consumers are getting younger and pursuing a lifestyle in which they feel fulfillment of their healthy bodies and minds while facing the stress and the problems of modern society. We also notice that insufficient sleep and inadequate quality of sleep have become a severe concern in cities like Shanghai. Sleep is an essential function that allows your body and mind to recharge, leaving you refreshed and alert when you wake up. Healthy sleep also helps the body remain healthy and stave off diseases. Without enough sleep, the brain cannot function properly. This can impair your abilities to concentrate, think clearly, and process memories. It is important to design unique, comprehensive wellness programs which make the customers feel healthy and satisfied.

What have The Sukhothai Shanghai and The Retreat done during the pandemic and the post-pandemic era? Have you launched any new programs, procedures or concepts?

The Sukhothai Shanghai is celebrating its third year anniversary in April and The Retreat in May. We have continuously sought opportunities to elevate the wellness experience under the pandemic and post-pandemic when the level of safety and security of our guests have been significantly lifted up throughout the hotel. Wellness is all about balancing and nourishing the body, mind, spirit and emotions in any circumstances. We introduced various weekend activities such as flow yoga, ballet last year and we were pleased to launch wellness membership with access to daily activity classes organised by The Retreat in January. In collaboration with Natura Bissé, a one-week pop-up spa was set to offer an unparalleled detox experience where guests could breathe 99.99% pure air in the Bubble Pure Air in March and neck treatment will be offered to care for the sensitive and essential part of the body in May. We are in discussion with one of the high-end fragrances and scents brands about new wellness program. Moreover, The Retreat will be able to introduce an innovative wellness journey to the market once the borders reopen freely.

An interview with Ms. Sophie Wang, VP of Intelligent Business, DeepGlint

Artificial intelligence and big data technology have quietly and overwhelmingly changed our lives. DeepGlint is a technology company focusing on the development of artificial intelligence algorithm and applications. Its clients are spread over various fields including wellness, retail, finance, sport, urban life and more. DeepGlint collects and analyzes big data with accurate algorithms to help clients gain insights into their guests, understand their own business situations, optimize product mix and marketing strategies, predict market trends, and reap business success. SpaChina interviewed Ms. Sophie Wang, VP of Intelligent Business of DeepGlint. She reveals to us how artificial intelligence and big data technology are applied to the health and spa industry in particular.

Sophie holds a Master’s degree in Fashion, Experience & Design Management from SDA Bocconi School of Management, Italy. Her career started with new brand creation, design, sales and overseas promotion in a large state-owned enterprise. After that, she had five years of experience in developing her own brand, Darling, at home and abroad, and served as a consultant or senior executive for a number of international luxury brands, like MaxMara, LaPerla and Tod’s Group. Sophie has rich experience and resources concerning the integration of online and offline operations and the development of the fashion industry. She always desires to bring customers a high ROI experience. Currently, at DeepGlint, she is mainly responsible for applying artificial intelligence and big data to help offline retail enterprises realize intelligent digitalized operation and management, improve sales and efficiency, and achieve a long-term healthy development.

Please introduce DeepGlint to us, including your team, core technologies, business areas, main clients, products and services, etc.

DeepGlint is a leading company in the industry specialized in artificial intelligence technology, focusing on the development of artificial intelligence algorithms and applications. We are committed to transforming artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and big data technology into intelligent products and services, and providing our clients with diverse products and solutions including software, intelligent hardware and cloud services fit for different business scenes. DeepGlint has a wide range of clients from different industries and fields. Our main business sectors include Smart Finance, Smart City, Smart Business, and Smart Sport.

Our self-developed technology in terms of visual perception, intelligent data mining and high-performance computing is globally leading. We have won awards in various artificial intelligence algorithm competitions home and abroad. 

DeepGlint is headquartered in Beijing and has branches in Shanghai, Chengdu, Hefei and Guangzhou. Our team is composed of a large number of senior professionals from China and overseas alike who possess rich business operation experience and a strong technical background.

In terms of wellness resorts / spas / beauty salons, how do you help them gain insights into their guests and improve their products, services and experience?

We comprehensively present the guests’ information to our clients, help them identify their core guest groups, grasp the changing trends, and understand the different concerns and consumption motivations of their guests. As a result, they can better understand their guests and then provide personalized services or recommend the right products to each individual. Guests’ experience are surely improved at the end of the day.

At wellness resorts, spas and beauty salons for example, at the entrance, DeepGlint intelligent business system can immediately and accurately show the age and gender of the guests and tell whether they come for the first time or not, whether they also visit other chain stores or not, whether they come alone or with others, whether they are guests or staff, and their visit frequency, etc. By analyzing the moving line diagram and thermodynamic diagram of the guests, the system then clearly and quickly show the crowded and uncrowded areas of the place, the service quality of the staff, whether different types of guests have visited the core business area or not, their length of stay and interaction information, and to what kind of products they pay attention, etc. All this information gives our clients a better understanding of how to improve guests’ experience and satisfy different types of consumers. Combined with the right products and marketing approaches, income will surely increase.

At spas and beauty salons in particular, we can also evaluate the effect of their show windows and advertisements, calculate the conversion rate of people passing by the door, analyze the interaction status at the core area, allow staff to update guest information in the system, and remind clients to do proper preparations in advance so as to provide personalized experiences upon their arrival. The multi-dimensional, highly valuable, precise and personalized data that we offer can effectively guide our clients to adjust their business strategies and management approaches in time.

In addition, we help clients to form more connections with the guests even when they leave the store via advanced scientific and technological methods.

To sum up, with the power of our smart business system, we are able to support our clients to optimize and innovate their product portfolio, improve services, break through traditional business models, embrace internet thinking, and take advantage of industry experience and resources, and thus create more profit.

Apart from guest information, what other data and service support can you provide to your clients?

To help our clients gain insight into guest information and characteristics is surely very important, but it is still just a part of business big data analysis. Any single piece of data must be analyzed interactively with other different types of data to achieve better results.

The Smart Business system of DeepGlint focuses on the core value to help clients give full play to their own advantages. Through five smart sectors (client management, brand management, product management, marketing management and employee management), we help our clients fulfill information digitization, capitalization and monetization, maintain sales growth, and realize efficient inventory turnover and profit margin increase. We also guide them to discover new business opportunities and challenges, and carry out sustainable development.

In order to improve efficiency, DeepGlint combines its products for different fields so as to give a more comprehensive solution. For example, our products dedicated to the commercial area are often integrated with those for security cases, or used together with non-inductive temperature measurement products, and artificial intelligence sport products.

For example, we can blacklist some high-risk visitors for the hotels and resorts by connecting with the public security system, to create a safer and more relaxed environment. We understand that there are some special guests who particularly care about their privacy and identity protection. In such cases, we do behavior warning analysis of the people around them within a selected diameter. It’s a good way to improve guest experience. In areas that are only open to hotel guests, we will suggest using our “face scanning + temperature measurement” tool to do a quick pre-screening. We can also do observation in specific areas and once any suspicious people are found, the system will immediately send an alarm to the security personnel. With all these services, the guests can enjoy their time at the hotel without any concerns.

Very often, a wellness resort features an outdoor walking & running trail. Our intelligent system is able to reproduce one’s running posture and calculate the injury risk through high frame rate motion capture and real-time processing technology, so as to help avoid sport injury caused by improper running postures. The resort’s guests can get feedback and adjustment suggestions very quickly through a simple WeChat code scan. Our accuracy rate in calculating speed, stride frequency, stride length, center of body weight, and other related parameters is more than 97%.

For health management, our virtual evaluation and rehabilitation system combines visual algorithms with hardware. It gives real-time movement feedback and guidance during exercise, customizes solutions according to individual’s moving characters, and finds out the problems and preferences of the target users, helping the resorts and hotels serve every guest in a better way. By analyzing the exercising characteristics of each guest, the system automatically recommend a personized exercise plan.

Moreover, we have developed software for offline exercise evaluation. With their mobile phones, users can do exercising tests in various places. The system will do assessments and customize movements for users accordingly. Based on the performance of users, the system can make adjustments in time. The system can even create interaction scenes to extend the experience to a wider space and thus help hotels and resorts enhance their connection with the guests.

So you can see our Smart Business system is a systematic solution. By understanding the client’s advantages and giving early warning of risks, we help them improve guest experience, optimize product combination, analyze sales trends and driving forces, quantitatively evaluate marketing impact, enhance internal transparency and maximize resource efficiency. We assist our clients to comprehensively enhance their automatic operation, and issue high-quality reports regularly according to the big data analysis to help them make rational analysis and efficient decision-making, and optimize financial and operational indicators.

How do you advise and assist SPA (or other clients) to transform the data they get into specific business solutions? Could you share with us some successful cases of cooperation between DeepGlint and your clients in the hospitality and wellness industry?

DeepGlint attaches great importance to the commercial value of big data. We help our clients expand the data collection dimensions and explore the value of the data. Through continuous optimization of algorithms and data models, we do regular automatic analysis, launch highly visualized reports and customize consulting services to help clients understand their business situation in a more comprehensive way so that they can analyze rationally and make decisions efficiently.

First, I want to give an example of product pricing. The pandemic has drawn the attention of many international brands to the Chinese market. In 2020, dozens of brands raised the prices of their products again and again in order to make up for the losses in other markets. What we do is to recommend a proper price adjustment list and increase range based on the client’s brand positioning and big data analysis via our smart business system. We also make pricing models and carry out sales forecasts for our clients for specific products. Our clients are very satisfied with the effect.

There is another example. One of our spa clients complained that their guests’ loyalty decreased in the past two months and purchased products without systematic planning. With the analysis of our smart business system and an in-depth conversation with the management team, we uncovered the reasons. A few new brands came into the market recently which have a more competitive salary system than our client. Our client soon experienced a loss of employees. The newly recruited staff lack a deep understanding of the guests, products and services, and fail to properly utilize the system. Both the receptionists and salesmen lack enough interaction with the guests. So while our client begin to adjust the salary system, we accurately suggested personalized products that target different guest groups based on a comprehensive analysis of the data we gathered in our smart business system, including guest characteristics, their interaction information, their purchase history, the inventory, and profit margin. We also developed a plan including long-term spa programs and gift boxes to win back the core guests’ hearts. Together with the intensive and accurate marketing promotions done by the client, we helped them to tide over the crisis successfully. During the anniversary, our client not only witnessed a significant sales increase compared with the same period last year, but also attract many more people to join in the membership.

For clients who have strategic cooperation with us, we not only help them understand better their current business situation, but also regularly provide them with data reports concerning the market environment, consumer comments and competitor information, so that they can always keep ahead.

Our clients who use our Smart Business products and solutions have generally achieved a double-digit, triple digit or even higher growth rate of sales in the short term. In fact, we also offer support to our clients in the long term. For example, we collect, accumulate and build a perfect big data system for them through the intelligent Internet of Things. This system not only makes them understand the current situation better and foresee the future risks and opportunities, but also enables them to quickly accumulate the intangible assets of big data and gradually realize the transformation from quantitative change to qualitative change.

In the process of data collection, data modeling and management, what devices and technology do you mainly use? What are the factors that decide the accuracy of data? How does DeepGlint ensure data accuracy?

Data accuracy is affected by many factors. The first is the accuracy of data collection, which is a big test for our hardware and experience. In terms of hardware, apart from selecting the industry’s top partners, we have developed the world’s first three-dimensional behavior analyzer, the world’s first long-distance face recognition camera and others. In addition to excellent hardware products, we also have a team of senior engineers, who work out the best configuration plan for clients according to their characteristics and needs, taking into account both the beauty and accuracy at the same time.

The core of data accuracy lies in the algorithm engine. Our founder and CEO, Dr. Zhao Yong was graduated from the Department of Computer Engineering of Brown University, specializing in computer vision and computational imaging. He is a former senior researcher of Google Research Institute and one of the inventors of Google Glasses. Under his leadership, our algorithm is in the leading position in the industry, whether for the feature recognition of people, cars and objects, or the recognition and analysis of 3D posture and other motions.

Meanwhile, we are also proud of our attitude of diligent learning and scientific truth-seeking. In all cooperation, we attach great importance to our clients’ feedback, and are keen on learning from the industry experience. This has laid a solid foundation for us to continuously renew, optimize and innovate products while ensuring high data accuracy.

What do you think of the development prospects of big data technology in the hospitality and health industry? We all know it is an inevitable trend, but how fast and deep will it develop? What is the development plan of DeepGlint in this area?

Thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence and big data technology, a large number of data collection and pre-analysis work can be done by artificial intelligence now instead of humans. As a result, the management team has more time and energy to make decisions based on the rich data and analysis reports. The application of artificial intelligence, big data and cloud services help enterprises process basic data more quickly, increase information flow and transparency, find out the relevance of different data and do trend predictions accurately.

From the application level, the pandemic has driven the digitization of offline business in the hospitality and health industry. We see more and more face scan entry services, robot stewards, and environment friendly smart household devices. Big data and AI are widely accepted and practiced in the whole industry very quickly yet also silently. A friend of mine shared his experience. He is the VVIP of a top international hotel group. He once came to a new property of the hotel group that he had never visited before, however, since his arrival, all the staff were able to call his name correctly and offered him services in the way he preferred, which made this picky guest quite satisfied. Since then, he has kept this hotel brand on his travel list. No doubt, this is a good example of big data application. In the past, such services could only be achieved through repeated personnel training, but now they can be quickly realized with technological tools. It improves the guest experience and their loyalty with lower cost and higher efficiency. DeepGlint is a company specialized in artificial intelligence. Our vision is to make the world a better place through technology. We only cooperate with clients who share the same sense of social responsibility and values with us, and who pay attention to brand value and have long-term development plans. For the hospitality and health industry, word-of-mouth and guest experience are the most important things. Online service can play an effective role in product promotion and market education, but it is unfailingly the offline experience that determines the outcome. We will continue to work together with our clients in exploring and cultivating the offline business scenes, helping them get a deep insight into their guests so as to effectively solve the needs of the guests and constantly optimize their operations. At the same time, we will support the hotels to create a more relaxed and safe environment and a richer interactive experience by combining in our advantages in Smart Security and Smart Sports sectors. Even when the guests leave the hotels or spas, they will still stick to the brand faithfully and passionately share their experience with others.