Its name: A.L.O. pronounced "el-oh", the hotels' first Botlr (short for robotic butler). Standing just under 3 feet tall, A.L.O. comes dressed in a vinyl-collared butler uniform and will soon be on call all day and night to fulfill requests from guests.
Forget your toothpaste? Need more towels? How about a late-night chocolate bar? All guests of the hotel have to do is call the front desk, where staff will load up the Botlr with requested items, punch in the guest's room number and send it off to make the delivery. The bot can navigate hallways and even call for the elevator using Wi-Fi.
At the Aloft hotel in Cupertino, California, A.L.O is being fine-tuned for the Aug. 20 official launch of this pilot program. If successful, the Botlrs will appear in nearly 100 properties. Brian McGuinness, senior vice president for the Aloft brand, said he could see having one or two Botlrs in each Aloft hotel.
According to a study done at the University of Oxford, 47 percent of U.S. employment is at risk of being replaced by computerization, but Starwood says these robots are not intended to replace any employees. Rather, they are there to free them up from small tasks, leaving them more time to deal with customers face to face.
That's something the American Hotel and Lodging Association's President and CEO Katherine Lugar likes.
The Botlr was designed and built by Sunnyvale, California, start-up Savioke, which in April announced a seed round of funding of $2 million from investors, including Google Ventures.
Starwood Hotels, which is funding the pilot, has an exclusive deal with Savioke through the end of the year. The robots' cost was not made available, but Cousins said they will become more affordable as certain supply costs come down. The business model will involve leasing the robots and charging a service fee.
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