In the age in which travelers are craving unique experiences, what happens when you throw robots into the mix? Do people prefer a personal touch or do they want innovation and efficiency? 

Imagine this scenario: You are relaxing in your hotel room and call reception to request a fresh towel. Minutes later, there is a knock at the door and outside a robot awaits you with a perfectly folded bath towel. Would you appreciate this innovation or dislike the lack of personal interaction?

This is not a concept of the future, but rather it already exists.  Several creators of autonomous robot helpers are attempting to revolutionize the guest experience by offering technology to enhance it. Some properties are already using these robots: Marriott has Mario welcoming guests in Ghent, Hilton has Connie the concierge in Virginia and InterContinental has Dash, autonomously relaying items from staff to guests in numerous hotels.

Service robots are programmed to respond to simple guest queries such as a request for a towel or a snack. A member of hotel staff can place this object in the robot and it is programmed to take this to a specific room. Others, such as Connie at the Hilton, can tell guests what they need to know about where to eat, drink, and anything else they might want to know about the hotel.

There are pros and cons to having robots serve guests at your hotel. Advantages, it is memorable and there is no possibility of conflict between staff and guests. Disadvantages, it is not as personal and some guests may be put off by the lack of human touch or a friendly smile.

What we are seeing at ReviewPro is that that by using Guest Intelligence, hotels as well as robot creators themselves, can monitor how the robots are being received by guests. Our Advanced Semantic Analysis can be used to create keyword alerts to track and monitor how guests are responding to the robots. This enables the individual hotels to identify any online reviews from guests that contain comments related to the robots to analyze the positive or negative impact.

This innovation in the guest experience demonstrates just one of the exciting technology developments happening in the hospitality industry, both in terms of the robot technology and the way guest satisfaction performance is measured.

About RJ Friedlander

ReviewPro is the leading provider of Guest Intelligence solutions to independent hotel brands worldwide. The company’s suite of cloud-based solutions includes Online Reputation Management (ORM) and Guest Satisfaction Surveys (GSS), which enable clients to obtain a deeper understanding of reputation performance as well as operational/service strengths and weaknesses. We provide actionable insight to increase guest satisfaction, rankings on review sites/OTAs and revenue.

The company offers the industry-standard Global Review Index™ (GRI), an online reputation score, which is used by thousands of hotels worldwide as a benchmark for reputation management efforts, based on review data aggregated from 175 OTAs and review sites in more than 45 languages. More than 25,000 hotels worldwide are currently using ReviewPro’s solutions. For more information about ReviewPro, please visit www.reviewpro.com .