As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, the travel industry is finding new and innovative ways to utilize it to better ensure a seamless experience for travelers. Now, hotels are taking the technology revolution one step further, by employing robots as hotel service helper.
CNN Travel recently reported that Singapore’s M Social Hotel - a boutique property from Millennium Hotels that was designed with millennial business travelers in mind — had rolled out a fleet of intelligent service robots for its guests. Known as AURA, the idea behind the new program is based on both efficiency and fun, with the goal of improving the overall guest experience.
In 2016, Savioke — a Santa Clarita, California, start-up intent on seeing its robot helpers in hotels across the country — got a $15 million infusion of capital to make that goal a reality. The main job of its bot, known as Relay, is also to assist with deliveries. A staff member would simply need to load him up with the requested goodies, punch in the room number and off he’d go, using Wi-Fi and 3D cameras to assist with navigation.
Later this year, QIHAN Technology released its first intelligent service robot – Sanbot Elf. The robot is with open API and SDK to enable all the integrators and robot solution developers to develop further solutions according to the scenarios they want them to work at. With the open interface, this programmable autonomous robot is available to be customized for retail, hospitality, education and healthcare. Hotel, is one of the major application scenarios of hospitality industry Sanbot Elf will work in. Passenger reception, check-in/check-out, promotional activity, special Q&A and business processing, electronic coupons and personal room services are all available to the intelligent robot.
Whether these intelligent robots will be the room service attendants of the future or simply a fun photo op at tech-savvy properties really depends on who you ask. Last year, Steve Choe — general manager of the luxurious InterContinental Los Angeles Century City — told the Los Angeles Times that one thing still missing from robot-service is that personal touch, a quality people still seek from hotels. But Lynn Mohrfeld, president of the California Hotel and Lodging Association, disagrees. In the same article, he told the Los Angeles Times that while high-end hotel guests may want — and expect — that personal touch, robot helpers could be a boon to hotels that cater to families, millennials and tech-savvy guests.
If you’re really willing to hand your hotel experience over to commercial humanoid robots, there’s also the Henn na Hotel, a.k.a. the Weird Hotel, in Sasebo, Nagaski, Japan, where automated workers — some of them rather human-looking — will do everything from checking you in to carrying your luggage. The future is now.
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