Earlier this week, in an article titled “Hotel’s Robot Butlers Could Revolutionize Room Service” CBS reported on a Silicon Valley Hotel that is trying a novel approach to improving guests experience with room service by adding Robot Butlers to its staff.
As exciting as it sounds… “could” is a very important part of the article’s title. Yes, technically it’s possible that in the next few years robotic hospitality will be all the rage, but we kinda doubt it.
First of all, the title “Robotic Butler” is a pretty drastic overstatement. The automated devices the “Aloft” hotel refers to as robotic butler’s are really just automated delivery carts.
The process starts when a guest contacts the front desk with a need. They request towel, water bottle, toothbrush or some other minor item and the front desk attendant loads the object into the robot butler’s carrying compartment. The robot butler then navigates to the guest’s room using a combination of lasers, cameras and sonar.
If a robotic butler could make a bed, pour a drink and draw a bath all while reading guests a bedtime story than yes, it would probably revolutionize the industry… but that’s not even close to what the Aloft’s “robotic butlers” are.
Why it’s not going to change anything
1) Doesn’t give guests a benefit
If anything, the robot butlers are probably going to take longer to deliver items than a human would take.
They also lack any human interaction that adds to guest experience “have a nice evening sir” or “can I get you anything else?” coming from a good employee adds a level of comfort that robot butlers can’t match.
The only value robot butlers add is novelty. Will guests book a room at the Aloft just to get their room service in a highly futuristic way? Probably, but how long will the excitement last?
2) Detracts from good customer service.
Oh, you know what, I want to know a good place to go out to eat, maybe I’ll ask the room service person if he knows a good place.
NOPE, your robot butler cannot recommend local places to eat, it can’t tell you what time the continental breakfast opens in the morning and it probably can’t even set up a wakeup call!
Having a real person do tasks such as room service actually adds to guest service by giving them a real person to interact with. A person hat can answer questions and give advice.
What hotel’s should be doing instead
Yes, it’s a novel idea, and it does save front desk attendants to work the desk, so it may benefit the hotel. But Hotel’s would be better off by spending their money in actually improving guest experience.
If Hotels want to do something edgy and futuristic they should take notes from the world’s first Twitter Hotel.
Another option is to create an app, or even a way for guests to enter their rooms using their phones as keys! The point is, their are already some really cool ideas out their that could change the industry. Using robots is a gimmick!
What do you think about robotic butlers? Revolutionary or waste of money?
