Artificial intelligence compensates for the staff shortage in Swiss hotels
The sector is facing difficulty in securing the necessary staff, amid a shortage of cooks and cleaning staff (AFP)
Specialists solve the shortage of chefs, cleaning and service personnel with their robot counterparts
If many fear that artificial intelligence will compete with or replace them for their jobs, Swiss hotels may use it to compensate for the chronic shortage of workers.
Officials participating in the Hotel Summit in Zurich expect a large turnout during the summer season with the return of travel to normal, but the most important difficulty they face is securing the necessary staff amid a shortage of cooks, cleaning staff and guest assistance.
Robots for moving dishes
In the "Avatarion Technologies" pavilion, the head of the company that provides, in particular, " robots " for transporting dishes, will explain two humanoid robots, each one meter and 20 centimeters long, intended to receive customers in the entrance hall, and one of them uses the "GBT Chat" program.
When one of them, who was originally programmed to give guests information about train and plane timetables, was asked, "Where can I order coffee from?", he merely replied that he was "just a robot" and therefore could not "make coffee."
However, the second one who uses "GBT Chat", soon after a short search found the solution, and after he also answered that he was not good at making coffee, he immediately appended his response with another phrase, "But I can tell you where to buy a cup of coffee."
And the founder of "Avatarion" Jean-Christophe Gustanian explains to the French Press Agency that reaching this necessitated going through "machine learning", that is, "teaching the robot the different variables of the question and the answers that it can provide."
Several languages
He notes that "Chat GBT" provides the robot with "a form of intelligence" that allows it, for example, to find an answer about what the "aloe vera massage" is provided by the hotel, as well as "a better understanding of the language," adding, "I can speak to it in French, English, German and Chinese, and it will understand." Thus, the robot will be able to help the "concierge" communicate with guests of different nationalities.
In addition to pavilions for companies that supply hotels with soap, furniture or equipment for fitness halls, the exhibition includes a number of platforms dedicated to technological solutions that allow better management of hotels and reservations.
Gostanian is also showcasing an application that allows you to communicate with an avatar from a smartphone or tablet in order to navigate the various services offered by the hotel, whether to order a dish from the kitchen or book a massage in the spa.
In the interest of the hotel, the accumulation of data collected by this application over time is supposed to make it possible to better predict the aspirations and behavior of customers, such as “the hour when the room will be available, organize the cleaning process better, and automatically reduce the temperature” as soon as the customer leaves to reduce the energy bill, explains Gostanian
Salary problem
Despite the very high prices in Switzerland, "profit margins in the sector are very low," which "limits the possibility of increasing salaries," says Christian Lesser, a professor at the University of Saint Gall who specializes in tourism issues.
"A receptionist in Switzerland gets paid three times more than he is paid in France or Germany," Pierre-Andre Michaux, owner of a 36-room hotel in Yverdon-les-Bains, told AFP. "However, my prices cannot be three times higher."
In May, the unemployment rate in Switzerland was 1.9 percent, while the hotel sector was one of the most difficult sectors to hire.
The director of the "Autillery Suisse" Claude Meyer indicates that this shortage restricts hotel owners and pushes them to "allow outside hotel spaces only in the evening," due to the lack of "a sufficient number of employees to work in the afternoon."
He calls on hotel owners to consider "technological solutions available to them" for automated tasks so that employees have more time to focus on the process of communicating with customers, "saying, "Technology will bring about great changes after 10 years, and I am sure that our sector can benefit from it."
Source : websites