The hospitality sector’s “robot revolution” is off to a slow start in New Zealand.
Robots have been serving customers in New Zealand for about two years, but businesses say the rudimentary and expensive technology cannot replace human staff.
The Sudima hotel chain – operated by Auckland-based Hind Management – had a team of robots worth more than $200,000.
Marketing director Dzin Alekzander said they covered a number of jobs throughout the hotel.
“We currently have eight in total. Five are what are called BellaBots, two are FlashBots and one is called a CC1,” Alekzander explained.
“BellaBots work in our restaurant spaces, FlashBots run our room service, and the CC1 robots are a vacuum cleaning robot.”
Without the need for breaks or sick days, some workers feared robots could take their jobs.
Alekzander said permanent staff were safe, but robots could lead to fewer opportunities for seasonal workers.
“The robots aren’t there to replace existing people, [but] what it does mean is when we gear up for our busier periods we may not need to employ quite as many temporary staff for that period.”
Guests loved them and they had never missed a day of work, but Hospitality and Tourism Executive David Allott said they were just another tool.
“It’s a transactional piece of equipment, it’s still very important for human connection [to remain],” he said.
“We are in hospitality, we do pride ourselves on delivering hospitality experiences which will always need human beings and human interaction.”
Allott said hospitality could not exist without a human touch.
“I genuinely don’t see a day where we will replace that human connection with a robot 100%,” he said.
“I really believe people look for that hospitality experience and that is a human experience.”
Unite Union, which represented hotel and restaurant workers, agreed. Assistant National Secretary Shanna Reeder was confident robots would not encroach on human jobs.
“We’re definitely keeping an eye on it, the robots have been around for one to two years [and] we’re not concerned because they haven’t been successful,” she said.
“They’re quite often faulty. The technology isn’t there yet for them to complete the work to the same standard that a person can do the work.”
She said some robots needed a human helper to work effectively.
“Some of the workers can get pretty frustrated if they have to follow a robot around that goes extremely slowly just to be there in case something goes wrong or in case it gets stuck or confused.”
Despite the technology’s limitations, Alekzander said the company planned to expand its robot army to more hotels.
“We’re definitely interested in rolling some of these robots out at additional properties of ours,” he said.
“I think robotics and certainly AI is really in its infancy, so where it goes in the future… I don’t think we really know.”
Robots might not dominate the industry any time soon, but Alekzander said they were here to stay.
rnz.co.nz