Elevate Your Hospitality Experience with Autonomous Cleaning and Service Robots

Challenges the Hospitality Industry Faces Post-pandemic

Staffing shortage

As one of the hardest-hit sectors by COVID-19, the hospitality industry has been facing ongoing challenges. Among them, labor shortage has been a universal problem affecting hotels in all price tiers. A recent survey^[1] conducted by the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) shows that 97% of hotels are understaffed and 49% are severely understaffed. Nearly 90% have increased wages, but 97% say they have been unable to fill the open positions. Due to the staff shrinkage, hotel guests now have to face slower service and longer wait times.

Evolving guest preference

Guests now expect different things from hotel brands as their motivations, behaviors, and expectations all shifted during the pandemic. Many are attaching more importance to hygiene and sustainability initiatives. They want to make sure the bar of hygiene remain elevated even when the pandemic is over. Research^[2] shows that a majority of consumers will either pay more for or switch to another brand if their health and safety needs were not addressed. In addition, an increasing number of travelers are willing to pay more for sustainable products and services, such as low-carbon travel and hotels or resorts with the highest energy efficiency or lowest water usage.^[2]

Leveraging the Power of Robotics and Automation

Technology providers have a role to play here.  Service robots, such as autonomous floor cleaning robots and delivery robots, are a promising new technology that has already been helping hotels drive revenue while improving guest appreciation. Hoteliers need to learn to harness automation and robotics technologies to manage change.

Filling labor gaps

Autonomous service robots can help hoteliers fill the open positions. The introduction of robotics in hospitality will radically and positively change the working lives of your cleaning staff and property managers. Robotic solutions like floor cleaning robots and delivery robots can take away the most laborious and least pleasurable tasks from human workers. Statistics shows that to clean an area of 5,000 square meters (53,820 square feet) daily, Gausium Scrubber 50 (robotic floor cleaner) can redeem around 170 hours of manual labor per month.

Ensuring service consistency and verifying performance

Service robots such as robotic floor cleaners can significantly enhance productivity and consistency of work performance. They are engineered to navigate safely in dynamic environments and work consistently to provide the best quality of cleanliness. Another bonus of service robots is their ability to capture real-time performance data. The operating software can automatically documents the area covered as well as consumables used, and visualizes the data in easily understandable graphics. It provides proof of performance and enable data-driven property management.

Enhancing employee engagement and guest experience

By freeing up valuable time for employees, service robots help hotels provide an enhanced job satisfaction and worker motivation, which can directly translate to greater work engagement and productivity among your team. Workers can focus on more engaging and fulfilling tasks such as supporting customers rather than the tedious and time-intensive tasks of floor cleaning or food & beverage delivery.

Over 90% of the hotel staff say that the Gausium autonomous cleaning robots have made them more effective and more satisfied with their job. By taking over the repetitive and time-consuming tasks of floor cleaning, Gausium’s autonomous solutions will let your team focus on the job of creating a positive guest experience.

Driving sustainability objectives

Automation can also help accelerate your sustainability initiatives. It improves efficiencies to help you cut down on energy usage, and provides the data for you to measure your environmental strategy. For instance, the Gausium robots can calculate the most efficient path during their operations to curtail energy consumption. The service life and status of various consumables installed in the machine are accurately recorded in the system so that you can check their real-time status and make full use of the consumables without waste.

Moreover, robots are making the workplace more inclusive for disabled people. Service staff with physical disabilities will be able to fulfill the service tasks by remotely control the robot via the app instead of doing the job themselves.

About Gausium

Gausium (alias “Gaussian Robotics”) was founded by Edward CHENG in 2013 out of a passion for autonomous driving. It started as a solutions provider of SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) and integrated robotics software. Today, Gausium has become a leading company of AI-powered autonomous cleaning and service robots with more than 2,000 successful deployments in 50 countries and regions. Currently, Gausium’s products and services include commercial floor cleaning robots, indoor delivery robots and supplementary accessories like docking stations, cloud platform and application software.

Reference

[1] American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA), As 97% Of Surveyed Hotels Report Staffing Shortages, AHLA Foundation Expands Recruitment Campaign

[2] Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research 2021