客戶至上的酒店業的未來在哪裏

The first thing I noticed upon entering the lobby of the Yotel, a micro-hotel near Times Square in Manhattan, was the robot in the room. Behind a pane of glass stood a towering white mechanical arm, the kind you’d find on an assembly line. Its name, the hotel’s general manager ClaesLandberg tells me with an air of pride, is Yobot.

一走進紐約曼哈頓時代廣場附近的Yotel微型賓館，首先映入眼簾的就是那臺擺放在大廳中的機器人。在一扇玻璃後面，矗立着一個巨大的白色機械臂，有點像生產線使用的那種。賓館總經理克萊斯•蘭德伯格帶着一絲驕傲的神色對我說，它的名字叫做Yobot。

“You ask the Yobot for a bin, you put your luggage in, and it puts it back in the bin. It gives you a receipt, you come back and scan it, put in the code, and it retrieves the luggage for you.” This process of storing luggage, a task previously reserved for front desk staff, takes the lumbering Yobot an excruciatingly long time. Is this really all it does? “We also use it for when we have holidays or anything,” Landberg says. “We dress it up.”

“你向Yobot要一個儲物箱，把你的行李放上去，它就會把行李放入儲物箱，然後給你一張收據。返回時，你只需掃描一下這張數據，輸入號碼，它就會把行李取出來還給你。”動作遲緩的Yobot經過一段長得令人心焦的時間才做完這項原本是由前臺員工完成的寄存行李流程。難道這就是Yobot所有的功能嗎？蘭德伯格表示：“碰到節假日，我們也會用到它。我們會把它打扮起來。”

I watched a few puzzled guests poke at the Yobot’s touchscreen, and I wondered: Is this the future of hospitality? The industry has been slow to change in the face of technological advancements, aside from perhaps an e-mailed statement of charges or use of an iPad, and for good reason. How do you introduce technology without undermining the comfort and human relationships upon which hospitality is based?

我看到有幾個住客茫然地戳着Yobot的觸屏，心裏不禁想到：難道這就是酒店業的未來？面對科技的飛速發展，酒店業的反應一直是慢了半拍——除了用電子郵件發送扣費通知，新潮一點的酒店用上了iPad，當然他們採用這兩種技術的理由也很充分。那麼，我們如何在不損害酒店業賴以生存的舒適和人際關係的情況下，將科技引入這個行業中呢？

One place this battle is playing out is the hotel front desk, which is beginning to resemble an airport check-in counter. At the Yotel, six kiosks greet guests upon arrival for check-in. “It takes about 60 seconds,” Landberg says. If you know how to use the thing, that is. Inevitably, some guests do not, which is when Yotel employees swoop in as technical support. “It’s not like we completely leave you alone,” Landberg reassures me. “We still have staff.” The kiosks are an effort to make the check-in experience more personal, he says. Let the machines do the busy work so staff can focus on the guest experience.

酒店業與高科技融合的陣地之一是賓館的前臺，現在賓館的前臺已經有了開始模仿機場登機櫃臺的趨勢。還是以Yotel爲例，它的大廳裏有6臺自助登記終端機。蘭德伯格表示：“整個過程只需要60秒”，前提是你知道怎麼用這個東西。當然無可避免的是，有些顧客不知道怎麼用，這時候Yotel的員工就會扮演技術支持的角色。蘭德伯格再次向我保證道：“我們不會把顧客單獨留在那兒，我們還是有員工在那裏的。”他表示，使用這些終端機的目的，是爲了讓顧客在登記時獲得更私人的感覺。另外把繁瑣的手續工作交給機器，也有助於讓員工專注地爲客人提供更好的入住體驗。

Kevin Crawford, a traveling musician at the tail end of his Yotel stay, was dubious. “Check-in was a little over-complicated,” he says, leering at the kiosks with one eyebrow cocked. “There are always guys here to help, so I just wonder why don’t they just have the guys check you in?” The Yobot was fun, he says, but its sluggishness was “a bit ridiculous.”

不過即將退房的旅行音樂家凱文•克勞福德卻不這麼想。他皺着眉頭看了一眼終端機：“登記有點過於複雜了，旁邊倒是總有人幫你，所以我想，爲什麼不直接讓那些人幫客人辦理登記手續？”同時他表示，Yobot倒是挺有意思的，但它的動作遲緩得“有點可笑。”

Starwood Hotels & Resorts, which owns almost 1,200 hotels across the globe, is also working to improve check-in. The luxury chain is testing wireless devices called beacons that communicate with your smartphone through the company’s app to tell the front desk staff who you are. “If you look at the most impersonal experience today at a hotel, it’s at check in,” says Chris Holdren, senior vice president for the company’s digital efforts as well as Starwood Preferred Guest, the company’s loyalty program. “This takes away that impersonal first touch and makes it personal from step one,” he says. An Atlanta company called Itesso takes it a step further with a Google Glass app that would let Glass-wearing staff recognize guests’ faces. For customers who don’t want to interact with the front desk at all, Starwood is piloting a smartphone-based room key at two Aloft Hotels, one in New York and one in Cupertino, Calif. Guests can check in remotely and waltz right up to their room. And, not to be outdone by the Yobot, the Cupertino Aloft will soon get its own robotic bellhop named “Botlr.”

在全球擁有近1200家酒店的喜達屋酒店集團（Starwood Hotels & Resorts）也在努力提高登記效率。喜達屋目前正在測試一種叫“信號臺”的無線設備，可以通過該公司的APP與你的智能手機連接，告知前臺員工你是誰。該公司數碼業務高級副總裁，“喜達屋優先顧客計劃”負責人克里斯•霍爾德倫表示：“這樣就可以趕走第一次接觸時那種缺乏人情味的感覺，從第一步就讓顧客體驗到一種私密感。”亞特蘭大的一家名叫Itesso的公司則走得更遠。它通過一款谷歌眼鏡(Google Glass)應用讓員工可以認出每張顧客的臉。考慮到有些客人根本不想和前臺打交道，喜達屋集團還在紐約和加州庫比蒂諾的兩家雅樂軒酒店(Aloft Hotel)試用一種基於智能手機的“電子鑰匙”。客人可以遠程登記，然後直接進入他們訂好的房間。另外，庫比蒂諾的那家雅樂軒酒店不想被Yobot比下去，它很快也將擁有自己的機器人服務員“Botlr”。

Another area ripe for innovation is the hotel room itself. In some ways, and by design, all rooms are alike. Yet anyone who has ever searched aimlessly in the dark for the light switch knows that they can be slightly and annoyingly different. “How easy is it to figure out how to open and close drapes in a hotel room?” laments Bjorn Hanson, divisional dean of the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management at New York University. “Which end do you go to? Why couldn’t we have a mobile device or a wand to open the drapes, close the drapes? Or at night if someone wants to get up and doesn’t want to reach around and try to find the light switch, how about if when you put your feet on the floor, floor lighting comes on?” It’s these slight, even mundane details that could benefit the most from a touch of smart technology.

另一個創新條件已經成熟的領域是客房本身。從某種程度上看，所有客房的設計都是一樣的。不過，曾經在賓館裏摸黑尋找電燈開關的人，都知道它們的位置多多少少是不一樣的。紐約大學(New York University)普雷斯頓-羅伯特-蒂奇酒店業、旅遊業與體育管理業中心(Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management)主任比約恩•漢森哀嘆道：“要想在酒店房間里弄清楚怎樣開關窗簾，恐怕不容易吧？你要從哪邊向哪邊拉？爲什麼我們不能用一款像魔杖一樣的移動設備來開關窗簾？或者如果有人不想在夜裏到處亂摸電燈開關，我們能不能讓客人的腳一着地，燈就自動亮起來？”能從智能技術中獲益最多的，或許正是這些最平凡無奇的細節。

A hotel with attention to these details does exist. Hanson need only cross town to visit the CitizenM Times Square, where guests can control a room’s lighting, blinds, and temperature with a Samsung tablet computer. (The hotel calls it a “mood pad.”) CitizenM Amsterdam promises to remember your preferred settings to have the room just the way you like it, “removing the traditional feeling of anonymity from the hotel experience.”

關注這些細節的賓館也不是沒有，比如離漢森所在的地方不遠就是CitizenM酒店的時代廣場店。在這家酒店，客人用一款三星(Samsung)平板電腦就能控制客房的燈光、百葉窗和室內溫度。（酒店把這款平板叫做“情緒平板”。）CitizenM的阿姆斯特丹店承諾會記住你喜歡的客戶設置，“趕走傳統酒店的同質體驗。”

The Yotel provides for some personalization, but not much. Landberg shows me around a 170-square-foot room, which it calls a premium cabin, with a bed that retracts at the touch of a button to create more space. He points to a sensor that turns lights on when guests walk into the room and adjusts the temperature when they’re gone to conserve energy.

Yotel也提供了一些個性化服務，但並不是很多。蘭德伯格帶我看了一間大約有170平方英尺的客房，酒店方面稱這是一間高級客房，房裏有一張牀，你只需要按一個按鈕，牀就會自動縮回去，營造出更多的空間。他還指出，只要客人走進房間，傳感器就會自己點亮電燈。等客人離開房間，它就會自動調節室內溫度以節省能源。

There is reason to be wary of all this technology, of course. If the in-room gadgetry breaks, innovative hotels may find themselves jeopardizing the one thing customers value most: comfort. No one’s going to care that they can unlock the door with their phone if they can’t get the “smart” lights to turn on, or if the thermostat thinks it’s 30 degrees cooler than it actually is. “For us, technology is about enhancing your experience and not becoming the main reason for why we have a business,” Landberg says. “We’re still hoteliers at heart. It’s all about the guest experience.”

我們當然也有理由警惕這些新技術。如果客房裏的這些小工具壞了那麼一兩件，可能就會破壞對於客人來說最重要的東西——舒適感。但是如果客房裏的“智能電燈”不亮了，又或者房間裏的恆溫器出了問題，誰還會在乎用手機就能鎖上房門？蘭德伯格表示：“對我們來說，科技的意義在於改善客人的體驗，而不是我們有生意可做的主要原因。我們本質上仍然是酒店經營者，最重要的東西始終是顧客的體驗。”

I ask Crawford, the musician, if he felt he his stay at the futuristic Yotel lacked anything. After a long pause, he says no. “I got everything I need, to be honest. I just want a good, clean, quiet, functional hotel.”

我問旅行音樂家克勞福德，他在未來主義範兒的Yotel入住後，是否感覺缺了些什麼。沉默了好一會兒，他說沒有。“老實說，我想要的都得到了。我想要的只是一個好的、乾淨的、安靜的、實用的賓館。”