Welcome Tech

Gizmos and gadgets are making your hotel stays more amenable, but the basics are still person-to-person

- Michael Allen

Around 25 years ago, while Abid Butt was staying in a hotel in Thailand, he called downstairs for an adapter. “Ten or 15 minutes later, all of a sudden there were security officers standing outside my door with a first-aid box because they thought I had asked for a doctor and were worried something was wrong,” says Dream Hotel Group’s CEO of Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa.

Butt believes these classic cases of misunderstanding could soon be relegated to history. His company’s Dream Downtown hotel in Manhattan has introduced Google Assistant Interpreter Mode to its reception area. Guests can speak in their native language to the device and have their requests translated to hotel staff.

“People are very happy that they’re not struggling trying to express what they need, so it immediately relaxes them,” he says, adding that the most commonly translated languages are Mandarin, Spanish and French.

“In the early 90s when Japanese travelers were contributing hordes of numbers around the globe, we would look for the language proficiency in the staff,” he says. “Now, technology is facilitating that 24 hours a day, and at a much better cost efficiency.”

At the Orchard Hotel Singapore, guests at breakfast may be surprised to find a robot asking how they’d like their eggs. The “Autonomous Service Chef Associate” can cook eggs either as omelets or sunny side up. There is also a front-of-house “Autonomous Service Delivery Robot,” which can deliver room amenities such as towels and bottled water.

“It initially took a while for our guests to warm to the idea of being served by robots. But they offer our guests a nice surprise and, frankly, a great photo opportunity,” says Byron Chong, the hotel’s general manager.