When Hilton launched in 2016 Connie, the robot
concierge, the technology had just conquered the hotel industry. According to
Micah Solomon, robots, mainly used in the customer service, are first and
foremost, helping to track guest preferences and enhancing the overall guest’s
experience. However, one cannot deny that a point of connection between the
event and hotel industry is that it’s all about the “experience”. One can
therefore wonder, if robots may also invade the event industry?
Let us tell you a story : Aurélia and I had the
chance to see a robot in action, during an event of course. His name was
Sheldon, and he was very excited to meet all the attendees. When we arrived, he
welcomed us and made jokes. We talked a moment with him, he even made hearts
with his eyes. We knew he was very busy so we asked him where we had to go,
where to seat, and where to eat. Sheldon was very friendly and walked along with
us for a moment, he even brought us drinks. The experience was memorable and
original.
This kind of robot can lead en entire event, and
make an event fun. He is able to do 360° roll, for 8 hours, controlled by the
team leader or staff person. His size adapt to fit the attendee’s size in order
to have the best communication. Sheldon has multiple functionality, but he can
only operates for 40 minutes per hour, and 20 minutes of maintenance. In order
to entertain attendees, Sheldon can bring you food and beverage on his little
tray, or brochure, computer and so on. Last but not least, he can pass on emotion
through his screen eyes. This robot really represent technologies and can have
a great impact on attendees.He can make jokes, lead people to mettings and
buffet, and create memories.
However, as event are about real and human
experience, we cannot go as far as to say that robots will replace humans.
First of all, event managers will always ensure that the event-experience
remains a human-experience above all. For instance, in the hotel industry, the
robots are being considered as a partner. If we consider technology in its
overall we understand that as the softwares and mobile apps are helping event
managers to organize seamlessly an event, robots are, to a certain extent, improving
the experience of the customer journey.
According to Kaylynne Hatch, Social Media Manager
at The Meeting Pool, robots can allow to reduce stress on the event staff.
In fact, as robots are mainly used to fulfill tasks that do not require high
skills, the event team can focus on the important details. Robots can in fact
be used for the registration process or have transportation responsibilities.
However, I wouldn’t be so reassured using such fragile, unpredictable, and
hardly repairable technology in direct contact with the customers, wouldn’t
you?
Of course, it is undeniable that it can
increase productivity as robots can be considered an attractive
multi-sensory labour force. Let’s be honest! I can already see all the
participants trying at least once to interact with the robots. However, I do
think that it might also increase the costs of the event. Hiring staff
is much cheaper than renting a robot for the duration of the event, even more
if something wrong happens to the robots (falling over).
To
conclude, there are a few good examples of robots being used in event industry.
We haven’t been able to identify if there were failures at some points. As
robot is still a very new trend, it is a technology that still needs to prove
its worth. Can an event manager rely at 100% on robots for some specific tasks?
In our opinion, giving time to the technology industry to improve such product
is probably the best thing to do. In fact, it will also increase the diversity
of robots (as well as their skills and capabilities) and reduce drastically the
renting costs!
Marielle Bernard & Aurélia Campagna
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