Alibaba is well known for its e-commerce platforms, but the Chinese tech giant has branched into fintech, film, new retail and now, hospitality. I recently stayed at Alibaba's futuristic FlyZoo hotel, which is adjacent to its headquarters in Hangzhou, China. Here, there are no keycards and everything is cashless. It features facial recognition doors, robotic arms at the bar and even robots that deliver items to guest rooms. Alibaba hopes the property will be a model for what a hotel of the future may look like. Upon arrival, I noticed the lobby was completely bare: no check-in counters, no concierge, and no receptionists. As a foreigner, however, I was quickly greeted by a staff member, who used a mobile device to take a photo of my passport and my face. Then she told me my room number and offered to email the receipt.

CNBC's Uptin Saiidi tests out facial recognition rooms at Alibaba's Flyzoo Hotel in Hangzhou, China. Eli Lo | CNBC

Andy Wang, CEO of Alibaba Future Hotel, claims the data recognition information is only kept during the duration of the guests' stay and is not kept on record. While foreigners are greeted by a staff member to assist with check in, Chinese nationals can check in themselves on kiosks by the side — or they can even check in on Alibaba's Flyzoo app on their mobile devices and skip any process in the lobby entirely. "Young generation, they love it," Wang said. "For the generation like us, they would feel a little nervous initially, but in a couple minutes with our assistance from the service ambassador in the hotel lobby, they will feel more comfortable. Everybody knows how to use Alipay, everybody knows how to use [a] smartphone." Alipay is Alibaba's payment platform which allows customers to seamlessly pay for items on their phone or send money to others. It has more than one billion monthly active users globally.