The world’s first hotel based on artificial intelligence could open in July, doing away with any kind of personal interaction.
According to the plans, the world’s very first hotel based on artificial intelligence will open its doors in Las Vegas, where guests will not interact in person with a single member of staff from booking right through to check-out. The guest experience will nonetheless be guaranteed – or so the developers claim.
The Otonomus Hotel is being built near the Las Vegas Strip, with more than five hundred apartments, various restaurants and two swimming pools. The concept was developed together with Airbnb. The aim is to offer guests the homeliness of a holiday home combined with the comfort of a luxury hotel, all fully automated.
Using artificial intelligence, the hotel collects information about the guest from the moment of booking in order to create a digital avatar of them. To do so, it uses, for example, the guest’s answers to questions about their preferences for the stay – such as whether they would like an apartment overlooking the pool, whether they would drink coffee or tea in the morning, or how often they want their room cleaned.
This, however, is only the first step: as Philippe Ziade, CEO of Otonomus, explained to an American broadcaster, the artificial intelligence searches the entire internet for data on the prospective guest – every social media platform, post and moment – so that, for example, their favourite coffee can be prepared before they even set foot in the hotel. What is more, because the artificial intelligence learns, it continuously adapts to guests’ behaviour during their stay, remembering their preferred room temperature and lighting, and even when they usually get up or leave the room. All this is to make possible the most personalised hotel stay.
According to Steve Escalante, vice president of Growth Holdings (Otonomus’s parent company), guests can activate or disable data sharing. The data collected is stored in a cloud and used solely to provide a better guest experience.
On site, everything is done through an app, whether it is checking in, ordering food or requesting extra toilet paper. Everything is digital and contactless. There is a kind of safe that can be opened both from the corridor and from the apartment; staff place orders in it, so employees do not enter the apartment unnecessarily.
Despite all the advantages that a smart hotel applying artificial intelligence to this extent can offer, it is questionable whether this concept really is the future of the hotel industry, or yet another step towards collective loneliness – a feeling that, according to numerous studies, affects one person in three. For travellers who avoid personal contact or for whom anonymity is important, of course, such accommodation could be ideal.
The Otonomus Hotel, opening in July, is already taking bookings, with a night costing USD 300. The company is also planning to open other similar hotels, Turizmus.com writes, based on an article in Reisereporter.
Source: Turizmus.com