He knows the biggest chains and smallest boutique hotels, almost sleeps in a hotel more often than his own bed. Ivo Weyel notices that more and more often he has to do things online: make reservations, check in, checkout... Digitalization within the hotel industry is becoming more and more urgent. Do we want a hotel run by robots or do we swear by the time-honored doorman and bellhop? "Soon I won't be able to travel without my nephew who understands all the technical gadgets."
He knows the biggest chains and smallest boutique hotels, almost sleeps in a hotel more often than his own bed. Ivo Weyel notices that more and more often he has to do things online: make reservations, check in, checkout... Digitalization within the hotel industry is becoming more and more urgent. Do we want a hotel run by robots or do we swear by the time-honored doorman and bellhop? "Soon I won't be able to travel without my nephew who understands all the technical gadgets."
Text: Ivo Weyel
The things you now find common in hotels: the key card instead of a real key (which once hung behind the front desk by your own mailbox - and yes, mail? How recently was it that there was paper mail in your mailbox?), your own bathroom, the tablet that allows you to control everything in the room, countless television channels on the TV that is also a computer (remember these: hotels boasting that they have CNN, wow!), air conditioning, and so countless other amenities that are commonplace now, but unthinkable before. We now laugh at the novelties of yesteryear, because developments move fast and the past is dead.
Industrialization
At the very beginning, hotels were nothing more than a collection of rooms over an eating house. It was only towards the end of the nineteenth century that industrialization accelerated and things started to look like something with the arrival of all sorts of novelties: the first electric elevator (1859 at the Fifth Avenue hotel in New York?), the first with electric light in all rooms (1880, Sagamore Hotel in Lake George, NY?) followed by our own Hotel Krasnapolsky, which a year later was the first to install its own power plant, the only year that is truly certain, as all other "first" years are claimed back and forth by a multitude of international hotels.
Was The Netherlands in New York the first with telephones in all rooms or should it all (first elevator, telephones, private bathrooms, electricity) be credited to the Parisian Ritz after all? Scholars disagree, but there is no doubt that those times guaranteed incredible technological developments at the time.
"Housekeeping!"Â
What will we be laughing about in ten years? About the tablet? The key card? The television? The knock on the door and the asking "housekeeping"? Because yes, there are already hotels where the chambermaids can see on their tablet that there are people in the room, so then know that they can't clean the room yet and therefore don't have to knock on the door. They see this through heat sensors, because humans generate body heat. Not that they can see what the guests are doing inside ('hihi, room 316 is copulating!'), but that they are there. Hotels are going crazy because developments are rapid and competition is fierce, so keeping up and innovating is the motto. But how is that financially feasible? A complete renovation of a room in a five-star hotel costs a few tons on average. Because this involves not only new furniture and a cool (electric, of course) curtain, but also new cabling behind the wallpaper, because faster Internet, for example, requires completely new wiring that - the nightmare of every hotel owner - is already old-fashioned by the time it's installed, that's how fast developments are.
Corona has accelerated certain developments: everything has to be as contactless as possible (at the Dutch hotel chain CitizenM, it was already commonplace before corona to check in by computer), staff is scarce so that has to be solved electronically, room service becomes self service. In Tokyo, the Henn Na Hotel is completely run by robots and machines. For now, it is a gadget and offers Disney-like entertainment, but you can already see how these kinds of machines are gradually creeping into hotel life. Take, for example, the facial recognition with which the guest controls everything: you check in with it, you open your hotel door with it, you order everything biometrically with one look and everything automatically goes to your hotel bill which - just a quick look and hup! - is settled. Exit key cards thus, you can wait for it to become commonplace. Just as children now ask "Dad, what is a record/cassette/phone?", they will soon see the key card as a fossil from a bygone era.
Restless sleepersÂ
Behind the front desk (at least, a glass wall that replaces the front desk) of New York's Yotel, a giant robotic arm stows your suitcases and the room's televisions are empty shells that can be/do/display anything you want at will with your own computer. Exit also light switches: the room knows via motion sensors when you enter and leave and how dark it is outside, so the light regulates itself and when you are no longer moving (sleeping) it turns off. Restless sleepers are still a thing - on/off, on/off - but then again, what new technology doesn't have teething problems? Virtual reality is already looking around the corner everywhere: put the thing on your head and see what all there is to do at the destination, what restaurant looks like and so on and so forth. I indicated that I wanted to eat Japanese food in New York and virtually the device not only guided me to the best or nearest restaurant (of my choice), but also let me walk around inside and see the menu, after which I could make reservations right away.
Also on the rise: Amazon's Alexa (or equivalents thereof) which lets you call out what you want for breakfast and what time it should be delivered, which lets you voice-control open the curtains and turn on the shower to the desired temperature. The Virgin hotel chain does everything by app (called Lucy to keep it a little more human): from check-in to light selection in the room (bright, romantic, reading strength) and the Cityhub hotels swear by the electronic, all-capable RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) wristband. Most apps get you home before you arrive so you can set up and order everything ahead of time.
Poor key man
Poor concierge, poor key man with his two proud, gold keys on his lapel, poor hotel butler, they will all gradually lose their jobs. Housekeeping probably too, because nano-bedding and mirrors (treated with dirt-repelling and odor-killing microparticles) will never have to be changed or cleaned again, and germ-zapping robots in the room (like the Westin in Houston first deployed) automatically kill all SARS and corona-like bacilli. I miss all those friendly welcoming faces of the long-standing staff now. Just like I miss my favorite paper newspaper hanging on my door in the morning, the doorman recognizing me, my shoes in front of my hotel door that miraculously reappear mirror-shiny the next morning. Soon I won't be able to travel without my nephew who understands all the technical gadgets. And so I whine on like a nostalgic old man in an ever-increasing robot world.
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