Top 3 Challenges Facing the Hospitality Industry

How Hiring a Robot Butler Can Help Your Hotel Grow

A comic strip has recently been spreading across the Internet. And if you are a hotelier, you will strongly agree with the father’s words in this meme. It may sound like a joke, but when you look at the hospitality industry, you realize that this series of comics reflects the bitter challenges of most hotel owners. It is undeniable that the hospitality sector is still one of the industries growing at the fastest rate per year. However, there are several challenges in this industry that can not be ignored.

•  Recruitment Difficulties

The hospitality industry has suffered a shortage of new recruits over the past several years. Now hiring qualified employees is still one of the hardest aspects of running this type of business, due to the explosive growth of new hotels and tighter labor markets. According to the workforce statistics from the United States Department of Labor, an estimated 1071000 job openings were offered in the leisure and hospitality industry as of October 2018. And also, A survey by Oregon State University shows that Generation Y (born between 1981 and 1996) are the primary factor for the challenges. For the reason that Gen Y, the main force in the labor market, unwilling to stay employed in the hospitality industry. Worse still, this is a long-term workforce trend. Without the right staff, it is becoming increasingly difficult to put heads in beds, and service quality levels, operational effectiveness, and customers satisfactions will be severely influenced.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

•  High Turnover Rate for Employees

The issue is not just about recruiting the right talent but also how to handle a high staff-turnover rate for employees. The reason is that hotel staff receive lower wages and often have to sacrifice their lives to focus on the customers’ satisfaction. This pressure makes them leave the industry earlier. In October 2018, around 8000 Marriott International workers organized a strike in eight cities in the US. Their slogan was “One job should be enough” and their protests made big news across the hospitality industry. The president of Unite Here Local 24 said that all they were asking for were just better wages and stricter safety measures.

•  High Operating Costs         

High operating costs have been affecting many businesses in the hospitality industry for a long time. Among the aspects contributing to these high costs, the major one is labor and is followed by marketing, utilities, training, renovation, cleaning, and maintenance. According to Hotel Management, the wage growth in 2018 might exceed the average daily wage growth rate. Wages in Boston are expected to experience a 5.5% increase this year as a consequence of higher minimum wages. In order to succeed in the market, Hotels should carefully manage their expense, and look for a reasonable solution to cut these costs.

What might actually help to overcome these challenges and maintain a healthy profit margin? Why not hiring a robot butler? Embracing a smart robot to your hotel is an excellent hospitality solution that can significantly help your hotel grow

Nowadays, many customers are attracted by modern technology and prefer it to the services provided by human beings. They want to check in automatically and seeing a delivery robot transferring items is new and exciting to them. The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group unveiled a robot hotel called FlyZoo Hotel in October 2018, in which service robots take care of the day-to-day tasks. The hotel soon gained higher profits than other less technologically-advanced hotels. This is one of the proofs of the success of this hotel solution. Let’s see how hiring an intelligent robot as a butler in your hotel can dramatically help your hotel business grow:  

• Labor Cost Reduction

Imagine that a robot receptionist welcoming your customers at the front desk and taking care of their check-in; a delivery robot navigates through the hotel to the guests‘ room, delivering the needed items every five minutes such as towels and toothbrushes; a meals transfer robot serves more than one dinner seats at the same time, saving your staff’s time and enhancing your hotel’s efficiency; a robot cleaner gives a proper going-over every day, making all corners of your hotel spotless. The robot cleaner only takes 130 hours to clean up the area of 5000 square meters, its cleaning efficiency is 60% to 100% higher than typical workers. Incorporating smart robots to your hotel can significantly increase the management efficiency of your hotel by lowering the labor forces to half.

• Strengthen Staff’s Morale

Tedious tasks and pointless work will make your staff feel tired and bored, influencing their productivity and morale. A smart robot in your hotel you will free your staff from the tedious tasks. This leaves them time to provide customers with a more meaningful and more personalized service. It can also keep them engaged and strengthen their morale. In the hospitality industry, some workers are looking forward the introduction of smart robots, which can assist them in handling a heavy workload so that they accomplish it without skipping their lunch breaks.

• Enhance Customer Satisfaction

Standing out in the hospitality industry is not an easy task nowadays, unless your hotel can keep up with the new market demands and provide unique services. In an era of instant gratification, customers are more inclined to choose technologically-advanced hotels. According to the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research, Gen Y will count as 50% of all US travelers by 2025. They love new technologies that can provide them with an effortless check-in and efficient services. With the introduction of high technology will significantly enhance their satisfaction.

Considering the challenges and the opportunities we have just mentioned, you should definitively put a robot hotel solution on your agenda. Besides, the choice of an intelligent robot supplier is essential to make your hotel stand out. In addition to Alibaba Group, a professional smart robot manufacturer in China, Huahui Tech, provides robot hotel solutions and produces smart robot for hotel service with powerful functions, futuristic design, and a very competitive price.