Hospitality revamped
Imagine walking into a hotel room where there is no bed to be seen, not even a working desk? No clutter of furniture and lots of space – ideal for an office! That’s perhaps how the guestroom of the future would be designed. Hold on…don’t be alarmed; tomorrow’s guestroom will have everything today’s hotels provides… as well as a variety of other options.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed a lot of things. It bought unimaginable hardship and made us drastically alter the way we live and move around. The virus’s onslaught catapulted hotels to make that technological leap to survive or do nothing and perish. Hospitality was hardest hit and even after two and a half years, the industry, despite some sort of recovery, remains scarred. This is why hotels are hard at work designing the hotel of the future.
Contactless check-in and QR coded in-room dining menus are now standard practice and hotels have begun to turn towards robots to undertake certain repetitive tasks, that are usually performed by human employees. For a severely understaffed industry, adding robots to the payroll becomes less far-fetched than previously thought. Already alarm bells are sounding for labour groups in the US, who fear being run over by the emerging trends.
Equipped with sensors preventing collusions with guests and stationary objects while it glides through the lobby and corridors, a robot named Mobi at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Boston, will deliver that extra cake of soap or shampoo that you requested, or even bring the takeout you ordered via Uber Eats. Mobi will come up to your room and instead of knocking on the door will announce its arrival by sending a ping to your phone. What’s more, Mobi will even accompany you to your assigned room after check-in.
Mobi joined the 148 - roomed luxury property’s staff in 2020, at a time when guests wanted more ‘contactless’ interactions. Dressed in a vinyl wrap that resembles a hotel uniform and sporting a bowtie, Mobi has an on-screen sense of humour too. When asked how he spends his holidays, he will reply, with a digital smile, “Recharging my batteries.”
Relay Robotics USA is currently looking at developing vacuuming robots that can clean hotel hallways. Moving forward, we will see the rise of the robots, putting in-room dining staff, public and lobby areas staff including doormen, as the most at-risk jobs.
Getting back to the hotel room with that unseen bed or desk; it’s not that they are no longer available . They are both there. Marriot in its search to ideate and optimize hotel room design, in partnership with Ori, an architecture and robotics company, came up with a guest-room prototype in which the bed ascends to the ceiling and a table, which could act as either a dining table or desk, pulls out from the wall - seamlessly transitioning the bedroom into an office.
Not to be left out, Hyatt Regency is integrating design features that offer flexible seating to accommodate visiting friends of its guests. Going even further, Caption by Hyatt will offer bookable ‘Gathering spaces’ that are ultra-comfortable and more appealing than the mundane meeting rooms everyone is offering nowadays. These new venues will replace the stiff looking traditional meeting rooms with low-slung couches and natural lighting, instead of fluorescent over the head fixtures.
The hotel of the future will evolve through a continued transition, where the singular focus on hospitality as we know it, will expand towards providing additional diverse services – all aimed at creating enriching experiences.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier
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