Hotel companies have been dabbling in robotic service providers since at least 2014, when Starwood’s Aloft brand — now part of Marriott International — introduced robotic butlers at its Cupertino, California, property.
Other brands including Hilton and MyStays in Japan have experimented with robotic concierges — Hilton leveraging IBM’s Watson Artificial Intelligence capabilities and MyStays adopting the ubiquitous Pepper hardware and software robotic platform. Pepper has been implemented not only in hotel lobbies but also in medical reception, travel agencies, convention registration and other locations where one might expect to wait to see a human.
One of the biggest splashes in hotel robotics came in 2015 when the Henn-na Hotel — or “Strange Hotel” — in Nagasaki debuted with a primarily robotic staff of 243 units. A few short years later, most of the robots were decommissioned because they were causing more work for their human counterparts than they were saving. Front-desk and concierge robots couldn’t answer basic questions, although they could decline to try to in multiple languages. Another problem, the in-room butlers would wake up guests in the middle of the night, thinking that a gentle snore was a command to go fetch something.
More recently, in the pandemic era, robots able to sterilize a hotel room with light radiation or gently enforce social distancing in the lobby have gained some attention from the media.
In general, these robotic applications have succeeded in getting press, but they have not been broadly picked up and paid for outside a few brand-sponsored showcases. Robots can work all day, every day and do not need vacations, sick time or retirement benefits, but apparently the economics of profitably leveraging robots eludes the hospitality industry.
So where are the opportunities for robotics in hotels that owners might be willing to actually pay for?
Today’s artificial intelligence and natural language processing technologies — necessary components of a robot that will be interacting with guests — are not quite up to replacing a skilled or even a novice front-desk agent. This condition will change over time, but probably suggests applications that do not require the robot to attempt to speak with the guest may be more likely to succeed today. And quite frankly, although guests might choose to interact with a robot concierge as a novelty, they probably want to speak with a professional to make reservations for that important anniversary dinner.
Robots that are focused on a single task, such as sterilization, may have better economics. Or consider the “Yobot” installed in the New York City Yotel in 2015 — an industrial robot adapted to handle guest luggage. Other single-task robotics might include floor cleaning — think Roomba vacuums, with collision-avoidance technology and the ability to “learn” the room they are assigned to — or dishwashing.
Another category of robots to consider are those intended to augment a human being. Many warehouses and factories have had great success with robots designed to work alongside a human being and do many of the repetitive or potentially risky tasks. Room attendants experience a higher rate of injuries than most hotel job categories. Could a robot companion do the lifting and carrying while enabling the human to focus on the personal-touch aspects of cleaning a room?
The industry is exploring these opportunities and more.
Mark Haley and Mark Hoare are Partners at Prism Hospitality Consulting, a boutique firm servicing the global hospitality industry at the intersection of hospitality technology and marketing. For more information, please visit https://prismhospitalityconsulting.com.
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