Robot Service

Luxury hotels are swapping butlers for robots who deliver meals, laundry andconference set-ups, wowing guests and increasing back-end efficiency

- Harichandan Arakali

REMEMBER RICHIE RICH and his super-helper robot Irona, mopping up tasks in record time? Luxury hotels are now increasingly tapping into the world of robotics to realise this futuristic millionaire fantasy, and raise the bar for their well-heeled clientele.

Until now, hotels have depended largely on human labour. However, several robotics companies are now testing waters in the hospitality space—the latest of which is Alibaba Group’s AI Labs.

The Labs’ service robot—from delivering meals to taking laundry to rooms—demonstrates what guests can expect in the future, said Alibaba in a September press release. Guests can communicate with the robot via voice commands, touch and hand gestures, and its responses are driven by the same software, AliGenie, which runs Alibaba AI Labs’ smart speaker, Tmall Genie.

“We are excited by this tremendous development that is helping us bridge the gap between guest needs and the response time that they expect. Alibaba AI Labs’ robot is the next step in the evolution towards smart hotels. In addition, it is solving pain points in the hotel sector, such as enhancing service efficiency, with our leading artificial intelligence technologies,” said Lijuan Chen, general manager of Alibaba AI Labs, in the release.