Hong Kong developer Chinachem’s hotels unit brings in robots to beat coronavirus slump

Hong Kong hotels operator L’hotel Group has turned to robots amid a Covid-19 driven slump in the hospitality sector, with the aim of providing meals to guests and ensuring reduced interaction with staff.

The company, which is wholly owned by property developer Chinachem Group, will have three artificial intelligence robots called Genie delivering meals and drinks to guests at its 432-room L’hotel Island South property in Wong Chuk Hang, which welcomes guests in quarantine, by mid-April. L’hotel said it was the first hotel to introduce meal-delivery robots in Hong Kong.

A Genie robot is already serving 130 to 150 meals a day, mostly to those quarantined. “With the rapid development of information technology, L’Hotel Group is convinced that the introduction of robots in the hotel industry, to implement automated services, will be a megatrend in the next five years,” the company said.

The introduction of these robots comes at a time when hotels in Hong Kong are reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which has followed on the heels of months of anti-government protests. In the midst of this, tourist arrivals have all but disappeared, events have been cancelled and occupancy rates have plummeted. This has, in turn, forced hotels to cut some staff, force others to take unpaid leave and even suspend operations.

A spokeswoman for L’hotel said that none of its staff had been asked to take unpaid leave. The hotel, however, declined to reveal the number of staff and its occupancy rate.

The cost of each robot, acquired on a subscription basis from Hong Kong-based Rice Robotics, runs into six figures every month, said Victor Lee, the robotics company’s founder and chief executive. The hotels “want to minimise person-to-person contact” amid the pandemic, Lee said. “Comparing the situations before and after the epidemic, the growth [in sales] stands at three to four times.”