• The Relay robot by Savioke Inc.   

Excerpt from Globe and Mail

Room service at the Hotel Monville in Montreal starts with a phone call that tells the guest: Your robot delivery is outside.

“It’s room service without the tip,” says Lauren Schechtman, vice-president of marketing and sales at San Jose, Calif.-based Savioke Inc., which makes the Relay delivery robot now used in about 80 hotels in the United States, Canada, France, Japan and Singapore. “Our robot uses the elevator by himself, goes to the guest room’s door and, when he senses that the door has been opened, he will unlock his built-in secure bin so the guest can take out whatever it is they ordered.”

The travel sector is rich with touch points that connect consumers and industry workers with sophisticated technology. Airlines and hotels, for instance, are built on large-scale infrastructures that make it possible to reserve flights and rooms – right down to fine details such as seat numbers and pillow preferences. Most airports around the world now have self-serve passport and biometric scanners that move people in and out faster without compromising security.

But this is all old news for experienced travellers.

Faced with tight competition for traveller dollars and more demanding, better-informed consumers, travel and tourism companies are turning to next-generation technologies such as robots, data analytics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

“Travellers have more choices than ever, so we’re seeing more and more travel companies deploying these technologies to elevate the customer experience and set themselves apart from the competition,” says Michael Coletta, manager of research and innovation at Phocuswright Inc., a New York research firm focused on the travel industry.

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