hospitality robotics
Service Robots and AI: What Impact on the Future of Hospitality
Lionel Saul | March 15, 2022
By Lionel Saul Would you allow a humanoid robot to greet a paying guest at your hotel? Would the hotel guest prefer the ease and convenience of service robots or the warmth and service of a fellow human being? There is no doubt that AI will create both challenges and opportunities for the industry. This article reviews the trajectory and impact of AI in the hospitality industry. Humans and robots working together The question might sound futuristic, yet the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly revolutionizing the business-as-usual model of the hospitality industry. It has the potential to disrupt the custome...
6 Main Ethical Concerns of Service Robots and Human Interaction
Dr Reza Etemad-Sajadi | February 17, 2022
By Dr. Reza Etemad-Sajadi “Service Robots” come with a variety of ethical questions regarding their use. Research in this field can help to find the win-win balance where companies reduce their costs, adapt employee activities and give customers added value with the right use of robot technology. A newcomer in the service sector Around the world, a lot of people have lost their jobs during the pandemic. In parallel, automation, AI, and the usage of robots are becoming more and more frequent. Indeed, the health situation has increased firms’ digitalization and automatization processes. In the past, when automa...
Could Robots Breathe New “Life” Into the Tourism Industry?
PolyU’s School of Hotel and Tourism Management | January 26, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the tourism and hospitality industry hard, making employees and travellers alike more wary of close human interaction. Could robots and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies be the answer? To tackle this controversial question, Professor Seongseop Kim, Dr Youngjoon Choi, and Ph.D. student Mr Frank Badu-Baiden of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and their co-researchers conducted a timely online study comparing human- and robot-staffed hotels. The study provides fascinating insights into how the pandemic has changed tourists’ preferences and offe...
Is Hospitality Ready for the Army of Robots Coming to a Hotel Near You?
Max Starkov | December 11, 2020
By Max Starkov - Adjunct Professor NYU Tisch Center for Hospitality and Hospitality & Online Travel Tech Consultant By 2025, over 85 million existing jobs will be lost due to the seismic shift toward robotization and automation, according to estimates in the "Future of Jobs Report 2020" published by the World Economic Forum. Dangerous, mundane and repetitive jobs performed by manual laborers, unskilled and low skilled workers, assembly and factory workers will be affected the hardest. This same report estimates that some 97 million new roles - the "jobs of tomorrow" - will emerge over the next decade, jobs that are more in tune wi...
Hospitality Professionals Balance Robots and Human Touch for Post-COVID-19 Era
December 11, 2020
December 11, 2020 - “We’re at the cutting edge of technology that, as kids, we laughed about and that is now becoming our reality,” said David Sherwyn, John and Melissa Ceriale Professor of Hospitality Human Resources and a professor of law, when he led a panel of experts in a discussion about automation and customer service in October. The webinar, Robots in the Hospitality Industry: Adopting new technologies while maintaining the human touch, was hosted by eCornell and the Cornell Center for Innovative Hospitality Labor and Employment Relations (CIHLER) in the School of Hotel Administration. Sherwyn is the academic director of C...
