Hate interacting with strangers but love to travel? You might be in luck — more and more hotels are beginning to employ robots.
- The global hospitality robotics industry was estimated at $567m in 2023 and is projected to reach $2.2B by 2030.
- The always-on machines offer a solution to the industry’s labor shortages, rising costs, and 24/7 demands.
Lucky for hospitality brands, they already have a blueprint to go off of: Japan’s Henn na Hotels, where robots run the show.
“The world’s first robot hotel”
At Henn na, guests are greeted by multilingual humanoid receptionists, equipped with facial recognition tech, that handle check-in. Robot bellhops handle luggage, and robot concierges offer recommendations and answer queries with real-time information.
It launched in 2015 to a lot of buzz, expected to increase operational efficiencies by cutting labor costs, but the bots soon proved they weren’t up to the task.
- Guests complained about them misinterpreting commands — an in-room robo-assistant, called Churi, was known to wake sleeping guests after mistaking their snoring as a request, per Wired — while others found them generally unsettling.
In 2019, the chain fired over half of its 243 robot workers. But it rebounded during the pandemic, buoyed by its affordability — reduced labor costs keep rates at a reasonable ~$100 a night — and contactless service.
Ten years on…
… Henn na now operates a hybrid staffing model, as the chain continues to figure out how to employ the tech without sacrificing customer satisfaction.
While its original all-robot concept didn’t pan out, the chain’s international expansion to 20+ locations suggests it’s doing something right.
What’s working: the novelty of its robots, which can provide entertainment value to guests. At some of its locations, animatronic dinosaurs man the front desk, and its in-room bot, now called RoBoHoN, has been updated to perform 70+ dances.
In Japan, robot-staffed hotels are nothing new…
… but elsewhere, they’re just starting to take off.
Major hotel groups like Marriott, Hilton, Wyndham, and IHG have introduced their own robot employees in recent years.
For now, most of these bots aren’t humanoids but little R2D2-looking guys that tell jokes and run simple errands, like towel and food delivery (like the ones at the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel) — and probably for the best.
One expert told Wired that guests tend to expect realistic-looking humanoids to “possess total human abilities… which can create a negative customer experience” since they don’t.
And, obviously, they’re creepy.