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Robots and AI in hospitality industry – an outlook
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Wednesday, 27 October, 2021, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Rajan Bahadur
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Use of robotics has gained traction and this trend is on the rise. Artificial intelligence (AI) is finding its way into every sector be it automobile, hospitality, dining and restaurants and even to household appliances. AI has integrated into our lives and we are still discovering the impact this will have as we go along.
The hospitality industry is powered by its skilled workforce, which performs a range of functions that rely on the human touch. Of course, there is still room for technology to be embraced.
We are increasingly seeing AI technology being deployed to offer guests some specific services and conveniences. Digital assistance via voice-controlled assistants is making more of an appearance, such as with devices like an Alexa or Echo or Google Home. Automation of room settings such as temperature, lighting, appliances have also made the guest experience easier and more customisable.
This has gone a few steps farther in international lands. International hotels such as in Japan are using robots for various roles earlier performed by humans, for instance, robot concierges and delivery robots, which is a major change. These innovations at first glance seem very innovative because they’re unlike anything we’ve seen before (except in science fiction movies and shows!) The novelty of using such AI though may not be a truly progressive step in the long term. Let us explore it a bit more closely.
As mentioned before, the tourism and hospitality industry is a chiefly manpower-based industry. It has traditionally relied very heavily on the human touch and interpersonal interactions on almost every stage of the customer journey. The dotcom boom in the travel sector led to the launch of many travel sites, bringing disruption as one of the first major changes in the user journey, for example, customers making travel bookings by comparing and contrasting choices directly. These sites also use AI to be able to customise and target travellers based on mined data and chatbots. This has had many positive results, such as expanding consumer choice, widening the platform for smaller hotels and undiscovered destinations and more competitive deals offered by the industry to boost travel. However, there has also been some mixed responses – boutique hotels often compete for attention with business hotels on the same platform; sometimes this can hurt the experiential value of one option over the other as customers may be making the choice based on price quotes and basic amenity information. The interpersonal touch of a concierge or reservations manager being able to talk you through the various options available at their property is a missed opportunity that may not always figure in the grand scheme of things as we consider these changes.
Naturally, robotics and AI carry both, the excitement of future possibilities along with the risk of putting livelihoods of many at stake. Automation can eliminate or significantly decrease the number of jobs available, change the volume and nature of tasks for others, and in a few cases, possibly create new job roles as the workplace evolves. By 2030, the growth of the tourism industry, combined with the relatively lower supply, i.e., number of employees looking for a career in tourism and hospitality, may force tourism and hospitality companies in developed economies to introduce automation regardless of whether they want it or not.
Job positions that include automatable tasks such as moving objects, information processing, calculations, standardised communications, repetitive tasks, etc., could be considered for automation through computer programmes, mobile applications, kiosks, chatbots, robots, autonomous vehicles, and other automation technologies. In a post-pandemic world, these may also become changes that are welcome to stay as people choose to avoid contact other than when required. However, human instinct always veers towards being more social, so it won’t be long before people miss the personal contact that is such a huge part of the hospitality experience. Other tasks that require and are guided by social skills and emotional intelligence would be more difficult to automate and throw up problems of their own. Guest services, grievances, special occasions, food & beverage service all are aided by the personal touch and even rely on it.
Further, think about how various hotels would distinguish themselves from one another; it would be by the nature of guest experience and hospitality offered, outsourcing this function to robotics and AI chiefly is short-sighted as then users would just be comparing technological platforms and not hospitality brands in the market. In this context, the job positions may shrink in numbers, although not completely disappear. For instance, the hospitality industry is hiring professionals such as IT experts to streamline and standardise recipes, consolidate customer feedback like eating preferences and more. Equipment manufacturers have started developing equipment like automatic Dosa maker to conveyor belt Sigri to vacuum tumblers for softening/tenderising of meats. Restaurants have started serving food on guest tables through conveyor belts. So technology is getting in to hospitality as never before. Efforts are on to develop system do live streaming of food preparations of guest orders, this of course will take time.
Not only will they change the whole dynamics of working environment but also the nature of the jobs in hand. The workers who will be operating these robots will have to be especially skilled and the requirement for unskilled or semi-skilled workers will reduce significantly. Rather, the nature of skills required by employees at all levels will change to accommodate some aspect of tech-savviness and skilling organisations like ours are adapting to this need today, to plan for the next 10, 20, 50 years.
Yes, automation would create the need for completely new job positions in tourism and hospitality companies that are currently largely neglected – e.g. for robot maintenance and repair, kiosks maintenance and repair, big data analytics, machine learning, automation process planning and control, etc. Specialists in these areas would be necessary in order to successfully implement automation projects in tourism and hospitality companies. Hence, automation would create demand for employees with degrees in robotics, engineering, software development, artificial intelligence, and data science. However, outsourcing allows tourism and hospitality companies to get access to these skills without the need to hire highly paid and scarce specialists, so that they can concentrate on their core capabilities.
Along with the change in nature of the jobs and skills required, more and more institutes to provide these skills will have to come in picture scrapping our old mechanism of working and learning.
The robotics and AI sector is growing fast but we believe that India is still not rushing to get into the race for these advancements. As a country focussed on leveraging its skilled workforce and creating opportunities for it, a country of enormous semi-skilled and unskilled workers, it can seem alarming to have these technologies on board with us. The need of the hour is a strategy that makes room for inevitable technology disruption but in a planned and phased way that keeps employment possibilities and skill demands in its line of view.
(The author is CEO, Tourism and Hospitality Skill Council of India [THSC])
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