A 44-room “full scenario robot-serviced” hotel is being build on the West Artificial Island of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link in China. A limited trial is supposed to start late this year, with full public opening coming in 2027.
Robots will handle reception, check-in, luggage, deliveries, room service, cleaning, food service, guest support, security and even guest interaction and companionship.
It’s being touted as the world’s first of its kind, but it’s really more of an evolution than evolution – the first robot staffed hotel was actually Henn-na in Japan, which holds a Guinness record from 2015. The property still had human support.
This new hotel is in China’s ‘Greater Bay Area’ which consists of nine mainland cities and the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao, and is a showpiece for the Communist Party. It’s on an island that’s being framed as a robotics and tourism showpiece.
It will feature a restaurant and fitness center, and is meant to run as a coordinated robot service ecosystem covering front desk, guest rooms, public spaces, and full back-of-house operations. Guests will be welcomed by robot, and assisted to their room with bags, and all food and beverage and housekeeping services will be performed by robots. They also rout “interactive companionship” which is surely euphemism for something.
With $100,000 wages for housekeepers in New York City and $30 minimum wages for hospitality in the future, I suppose this is inevitable. I’m not sure I expected it in China first, though, where labor is cheaper as much as in tech-forward Japan.
Artificial intelligence isn’t going to mean the end of work. It isn’t going to mean humans don’t have jobs. I can confidently say that because I understand comparative advantage, and because intelligence still has a cost in terms of compute. Even if the AI is better at doing everything than I am, it doesn’t mean that it should do everything. We’ve known that for 200 years. And robots are even more costly because it’s computer plus physical materials, those are at least theoretically limited so there’s always tradeoffs in their use.
It’s going to be disruptive, though! It doesn’t just mean that knowledge work, from mid-level lawyering to consulting, is no longer going to be an automatic path to the upper middle class. Physical jobs were supposed to remain the domain of people, leading to a resurgence of the trades they said! Now Elon Musk is building a robot army at his Tesla factory in Fremont (it’s the reason, he said, for shutting down production of the Model S and Model X). And hotels are going to be staffed entirely by robots. Maybe we can finally bring back daily housekeeping.
Aeroflot has robots as flight attendants and robots are going mainstream enough that we’re seeing onboard conflict over passengers buying seats for them. Southwest hsa banned the practice. But it’s only going to become more common!
I’ll just stay home, thanks.
It has a fitness center, but won’t the robots do that for you?
Love it – hope this spreads worldwide. Yes you give up the human interacton but, honestly, how often is that actually a positive. I’m one that goes out of my way to avoid human interaction anyway and prefer to handle anything via email, text, website, etc instead of dealing with people. I already use kiosks or online check in/check out capability at hotels if it is available. Robot cleaning is common, I’ve been to restaurants in Japan that had only robot servers. Sure 4/5 star hotels will still have a human interaction but I definitely see the overall industry going in this direction and I’m perfectly fine with it.
@Retired Gambler — Translation: “I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords…”
“Artificial intelligence isn’t going to mean the end of work. It isn’t going to mean humans don’t have jobs.”
A comment that demonstrates an understanding of economics and someone who isn’t a Luddite.
Ah, yes, Gary’s usual strawman/trope/clickbait with all of these magical “out of control” hotel wages and that robots/AI/parent company apps aren’t going to greatly reduce industry staffing when wait for it, they already have and they will continue to.
Of course, let’s cherry pick two markets which are extreme outliers to the industry in terms of unions & wages and then overlook that in North American alone, that doesn’t in the least apply to the other 98% of people who work in the industry who’s wages are stuck in 2019.
Forget $30 an hour for housekeeping, the other 98% are lucky if they get $15 an hour and even if they do, chances are it comes with no benefits and the management company’s interpretation of what full time hours are, I.e. 37/35/32 but sure as hell not 40.
I’ll wait Retired Gambler’s Robot-Serviced Hotel Spa and Massage reviews.
Full back of house operations?
They gonna be making the beds and cleaning poop off the toilet bowls?!
The sci-fi dystopian future is getting closer.
Had to spend a year in a long term stay hotel due to home fire/ rebuild. The Staff was incredible and experience was better than I hoped for (gym/pool/ maid service/ hot breakfast with sandwich fixings for lunch/ 3 “social nights” a week with beer/wine heavy appetizers ( dinner),24 hr desk to take package delivery and security and more. Robots could not in any tech bro fantasy get within a million miles of that experience. BTW THEY HATE YOU AND WANT YOU DEAD!