Throwback on our last week at ITB, the World's biggest Travel Trade Show.
If you visited the fair, you must have been wished a great welcome by ChihiraKanae (photo 1) at the entrance of Messe Berlin. Indeed, Toshiba’s second humanoid robot was welcoming visitors in English, German, Chinese and Japanese.
If you visited the fair, you must have been wished a great welcome by ChihiraKanae (photo 1) at the entrance of Messe Berlin. Indeed, Toshiba’s second humanoid robot was welcoming visitors in English, German, Chinese and Japanese.
Photo 1: ChihiraKanae from Toshiba company at ITB 2016, Berlin (Germany)
What’s going on?
For its first time in Europe, this
robot humanoid, ChihiraKanae (photo
1) is present while her sibling is doing the same in Tokyo in a mall since
April 2015. The other star of the trade show was Mario, the youngest employee
of the Marriott Hotel in Gand. Mario arrived at the Marriott in June 2015, he
is a robot of 57cm high (Pic. 2). He can dance and sing, but more interesting,
he can welcome the guests at the front desk in 19 different languages and
present the buffet meals as well. According to its boss, Roger Langhout, the
director of Marriott Le Gand, “it puts smile on everyone’s face (…) good way to
make people remember about our hotel”. Actually, yes, who has already been
checked-in by a robot?
Photo 2: Mario at hôtel Mariott de Gand in Belgium
The R-Tourism or Robo-Tourism is one new emerging trend in our
industry. Toshiba, the leading company in this field, is “seeing a great future
for robots in tourism” according to La Croix online magazine (March, 2016).
What we call “robot” is a mechatronics
feature (mixing mechanics, electronics and informatics technologies) that can
accomplish automatically dangerous, hard, repetitive tasks or easy tasks faster
than humans. There are two sorts of robots: non humanoids and humanoids.
Humanoids are robots with an artificial intelligence, having the capability to
move by themselves, talk, interact with humans, take decisions by themselves
and to learn how to improve their skills.
Good news is that France and Aldebaran
Company is one of the leaders in the humanoid robotic industry. Their main
emotion-detecting robot Pepper, was
used in two cruise lines, Costa Cruises and AIDA, to greet passenger and
provide advice about dining, events or excursions in different languages.
What does it mean for the industry?
After the 20th century, its ICT revolution and the
installation of mobile devices at the heart of the travel journey, the tourism
and hospitality industry is entering a new era, the era of service applied robotic. Economically speaking, if the French
companies keep up with their lead in this field, it will create economic
dynamism, new occupations and a lot of jobs in the related industries. But, on
the customer side, the opposite trend would probably occur. How many jobs will
be cut because human employees will be replaced by robots? Maybe not now, but
in the long term, the innovation will get developed; costs will decrease,
turning automation into an affordable strategy. If we go further, robots
replacing humans means no week-ends, no holidays, never sick, no union-wide demands, more productivity. Carl Benedikt Frey,
Oxford University, is saying that « in tourism, a wide range of jobs might
be automated » as waiter, tourist guide or drivers. However, he adds that
it will rely on client’s appreciation reminding
that automated cashiers didn’t overcome the
classical human cashiers.
What will be the reaction of customers in front of a robot? Will they
accept it, be surprised and curious about it? Will they be suspicious and
reject this new kind of employee? Travelzoo leads a survey on 6.000 travelers
presented the 11th of March resulting in 2/3 (77%) of responders at
ease with employment of robots in tourism sector, Chinese and Brazilians being
the most enthusiastic whereas French, British and German are the less
convinced.
Any limitation?
- It seems good enough to increase the number of robots in the tourism
and hospitality industry, but our education and training system needs to change
to adapt to this new trend. Indeed, staffs would be unable to manage a robot
neither a team of robots. Management strategies need to change at their core
business.
- Our industry has also to consider the fact that automation would create
a dependency to robots companies.
- As Roger Langhout explained, we are only at the beginnings of robots
presence in our industry, but they shouldn’t be considered as replacements of
humans but more as assistant of services. Indeed, the tourism and hospitality
industry is a serve-based industry. It relies above all on quality of human
relationship. That is what makes the difference. So robots can be included in
management strategies but what is sure is that they cannot fit all the jobs of
the industry. They will be concentrated above all on maintenance, security,
transport, logistics or housekeeping. Probably not on departments with high
added-value where human relationships is at the core of the mission, such as
sales management or conciergerie.
Moreover, the expansion possibilities of this trend are limited in some
segments, such as luxury properties or airline companies. Automation, if developed
at a large scale, suits more low cost brands that look for budget savings, or
properties that are concept based, as the Henn-na hotel in Japan inside a theme
park which uses robots above all as gadgets to entertain customers.
More casually, what if the robot goes
crazy and destroys the front desk? Or worse, what if a client goes home with
one of the robot in their suitcase?
It might sound funny, but it is also the proof that robots will never be able
to replace completely the humans. In some hotels already using robots, there
are real humans checking the security camera.
And you, what are your expectations or forecast about the R-tourism?
Emilie VAYSSETTES and Marly DENNY
References:
http://www.itb-berlin.de/en/Press/Photos/
No comments:
Post a Comment