If you remember that hotel chain Sonder which went bankrupt last year, they had a zero-local-employees model: no front-desk, outsourced maintenance and housekeeping. I think they made the same mistake. Your typical interaction with the hotel receptionist is extremely formulaic. Many other hotels have replaced the sign-in process at least with a machine. That's most prominent in your mind, so its easy to assume that's where most of the value comes from.
I've stayed at the same Sonder hotel (in NYC) multiple times, and there was absolutely a front desk person.
At least in the UK, Sonder also wasn’t cheap and some of their properties left a bit to be desired. Plus there were often people (staff) sat in the reception anyway, so I don’t really understand what they were doing or there for, or where the supposed benefit of their no-reception model comes from.
I’d far rather speak to a real person and have some interaction when I’m travelling than mindlessly do everything through my phone and an app. I actively seek that. What we perceive as “the future” in terms of our phones as the interface undoes the basic social fabric that has developed over thousands of years. I’ve had some of the best conversations with random hotel receptionists - and isn’t it these secondary connections over the course of our days with people we’re unlikely to meet or socialise with again that can really help us feel better connected to society?
A lot of hotels nowadays automate check-in and check-out completely. I stayed at Henna Hotel in Japan which genuinely has nobody at the front desk (although it does have an animatronic dinosaur which bows to you), and wondered how I would have them hold my luggage prior to check-in. They'd thought of that - they had a bunch of free lockers in reception.
Yeah. Usually I don't need the receptionist, but part of the value of a hotel is that I know I could go to the receptionist and get any problems sorted out, if I had to
If I wanted a no-touch experience with no other human in sight or on standby, I'd just get an airbnb
Agreed, that's the single biggest discriminator between the two (now that airbnbs are no longer cheaper than hotels). You can automate check-in/check-out but you NEED a front desk with at least one person.
I've been to staffless hotels (numa) that were good and noticeably more affordable than their neighbors. I don't know if the housekeeping was outsourced though, I imagine that, without at least some local management staff, conditions would deteriorate rapidly.
I had a particularly bad experience with a hotel in Silicon Valley that had outsourced the front desk duties to remote workers. I was stuck outside in the rain, fighting a bad internet connection, trying to check-in. Probably saved them the space taken up by a front desk inside the hotel but I made a mental note never to use that hotel chain again.