Are humanless hotels the future of hospitality?

The reality is much more complex than black and white.

There are already many humanless hotels (mostly in Asia). So there will be:

- regional differences in approach to human vs machine balance

- variations between different segments (short-term rentals adopted self-service from the get go, many limited service hotel properties followed, but we won't expect to see if in the luxury segment any soon, maybe never)

It will be a spectrum. It's always a spectrum, especially considering how large and fragmented our industry is.

In the future, a purely automated, no-human operational model will increasingly become the way of things. For this to fully materialize, our industry and our customer will have accepted all forms of artificial intelligence—both soft and hard. Concurrently, the perceived value of real human connection will be systematically driven down to zero. Many indicators point dynamically in this direction today, creating what often looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, the genuine human experience will absolutely survive because, as with all major evolutionary shifts, there will be a vital counterpoint. That counterpoint will be the beautifully imperfect fallibility of human-delivered hospitality in all its glory.

Over time, the gap between these two models will widen significantly. The former environment will not be hospitality at all; it will be highly optimized "Dormitory Management" or "NoHo" (No Hospitality), as I have coined in past discussions, driven strictly by algorithmic space and product delivery. The latter environment will remain genuine hospitality—an inherently human condition that can only be delivered by human beings for human beings.

The strategic path required to navigate and achieve these contrasting operational outcomes is going to be incredibly interesting.

No. Humanless hotels will become more common, but they are unlikely to become the norm.

Automation and AI are excellent for repetitive tasks like check-in, payments, and guest requests, helping hotels reduce costs and improve efficiency. However, human interaction remains one of hospitality's biggest differentiators, especially in luxury, full-service, and resort hotels.

The future is more likely to be human-light, not humanless—using technology to automate routine tasks while allowing staff to focus on creating memorable guest experiences. The winners will combine the efficiency of AI with the warmth of great hospitality.

Ultimately, it comes down to the customer experience a brand wants to deliver and the guest segment it aims to serve.

For budget accommodation or business travelers seeking speed, convenience, and lower prices, a fully automated hotel can be an excellent fit. Automation reduces operating costs while delivering a seamless, efficient stay. However, luxury, lifestyle, and experience-driven brands often rely on human interaction to create memorable moments and emotional connections that technology alone cannot replicate.

Rather than a single winning model, I expect the industry to evolve toward multiple hospitality concepts. Some brands will embrace fully humanless operations, while others will combine AI, robotics, and automation with carefully designed human touchpoints. The real opportunity lies in using technology to enhance the guest journey, not simply replace people.

The hospitality brands that succeed will be those that clearly differentiate their customer experience and align technology with the expectations of their target guests.

The two hotels everyone cites argue against a humanless future better than they argue for one.

Omena has run without a reception desk in Finland for two decades. You book online, a code arrives, you walk in. It works at the budget end because nobody there was paying for service anyway, so dropping the front desk cuts a cost no guest valued. Cleaning and maintenance still run the building. Otonomus is the more revealing one. Billed as the world's first AI-powered hotel, it runs every role a conventional property does, and its founder is explicit that the AI augments the staff it employs. The flagship humanless case turns out to be fully staffed.

What varies is which tasks carry no human value. Check-in, dispatch, availability lookups, revenue management: all can go to software without anyone missing them. A good concierge's judgement, recovery when a stay goes wrong, the reassurance a premium guest pays for: that stays human, and grows more valuable as the routine drops away. Budget and extended-stay will keep pushing furthest because service was never the draw there. Everywhere else it's a task-by-task decision, and it hangs on whether the data is clean enough for the automation to trust.

There is a role for low-staff lodgings. In the 12th century, they were called Inns, and the cheapest room and staff-less experience was sleeping with your horse in a stable. 

The ratio of #FTE staff to #rooms is a useful metric that is rarely shared. The Aman/ Corinthian/ Red Carnation type 5-star luxury are often 2:1 or even 4:1, so several staff for each guest, but at £1k+ ADR, they can afford it. You can’t open a door, pull out a chair, or press a button without a staff member doing it for you. You are paying for service/experience, not product. Member Clubs like Soho are about 3:1, but they have proportionately few rooms and large F&B lounges.

Mid/low range like Premier Inn is about 0.4:1. My Yotel (now Hilton) outsourced all F&B, so it was about 0.3:1. CitizenM (now Marriott) has minimal staff on site, so it is also 0.3:1. Tough luck if your TV fails. Village Hotels are about 0.6:1, given they cover rooms + F&B + gym + M&E.

Zedwell, Bloc, Otherwander are 0.1:1 or less. You pay for bed / shower - windows / staff are extra. Go outside to look for F&B. It is a fast-growing sector.

I believe thе philosophy that guests require humans to provide services at the hotel is greatly exaggerated, especially today. A great example of why guests do not care about human-provided services comes from the vacation rental sector.

Today, 20%-25% of roomnights are consumed at vacation rentals/ short-term rentals: houses, villas, condos and apartments. From booking online to the actual stay, the whole experience is completely HUMANLESS! These same travelers who have experienced this humanless hospitality are prepared to do so at traditional accommodation types such as hotels, resorts, casinos, motels, etc.

There are three extremely important issues plaguing the industry today that are, inevitably, leading the industry to adopt more technology at the expense of humans: a) never-ending labor shortages, b) unsustainable labor costs and c) need to provide adequate services to the exceedingly tech-savvy and DIY (do-it-yourself) customers.

In my view, only through accelerated investments in technology cloud, mobility, AI, robotics, IoT can the hospitality industry solve these three major industry issues.

In the near future, thanks to AI, robotization and automation, hoteliers will operate on average with 50% lower staffing levels vs 2019: 75% for budget, economy, extended stay and mid scale and 25%- 35% for 5-star luxury hotels and resorts.

I think we'll see the industry split into two very different operating models.

For economy and select-service properties, I believe we're approaching a tipping point. Labor remains one of the largest pressures on hotel profitability, while AI, automation, and self-service technology continue to improve. Many travelers already prioritize convenience, price, and flexibility over face-to-face interaction, much like they've embraced short-term rentals.

Within the next five years, I expect one of the major hotel companies to introduce a brand built around a predominantly self-service model, with AI-enabled remote management, guest support, outsourced housekeeping and maintenance, and local F&B partnerships rather than traditional on-property operations. The economics are simply too compelling not to test at scale.

At the same time, upscale and luxury hotels will move in the opposite direction, doubling down on highly personalized service as a premium differentiator. In a world where automation becomes commonplace, genuine human hospitality becomes even more valuable – and guests will increasingly be willing to pay for it.

No. Humanless hotels are not the future of hospitality, but they are certainly the future for selected hotel concepts. Just as with any other technology investment, the question should never be whether automation is possible, but whether it creates measurable business value.

Every IT investment must achieve at least one of three objectives: reduce costs, increase revenue, or significantly improve service levels—which also drives revenue. Humanless operations can clearly deliver on the first objective. In budget hotels, airport hotels, or hotels with highly standardized guest journeys, AI-automation can dramatically reduce labor costs while maintaining a consistent guest experience.

However, hospitality is not a one-size-fits-all business. Luxury hotels, resorts, boutique properties, and experiential destinations compete through emotional engagement, personalized service, and genuine human interaction. Their guests are not simply buying a bed; they are paying for memorable experiences that technology alone cannot replicate.

The future is therefore not humanless hospitality, but smart hospitality. Hotels should automate repetitive, administrative tasks wherever technology performs better than people, while enabling employees to focus on the moments that truly matter to guests. The winning hotels will not replace humans—they will use technology to make their people more effective, more personal, and more valuable.

The question assumes a binary that doesn't exist. Humanless or human, pick one. Real hotels don't work that way.

Automation is most powerful when nobody notices it. WiFi used to be a feature. Now it's a utility, invisible until it fails. Automation is heading the same way. Check-in, payments, the hundred small transactions between a guest and a good stay, that's plumbing. Guests don't want to feel it. They want it to work.

The Otonomus and Omena models prove something useful: you can run the transactional layer without a human behind a desk. Good. That was never where hospitality lived. It lives in the moment a front desk agent clocks that you run triathlons and leaves a towel and water by your door. No algorithm booked that memory.

So the future isn't humanless. It's human-optional at the utility layer, and fiercely human everywhere it counts. The best operators won't ask "can we remove people?" They'll ask "what do we free our people to do?" I believe that's the better question and the one worth building towards.

Not "either/or" — this is a segmentation question, not a binary one.

Humanless models like Otonomus and Omena work because they're honest about what they are: efficient, predictable, low-touch stays for guests who value speed and autonomy over interaction. Given today's labour economics, that's a legitimate and growing segment. But calling it "the future of hospitality" conflates one operating model with the whole industry.

The more useful lens is technology as enabler, not replacement. Automation should remove friction from transactional, repeatable moments — check-in, routing requests, F&B ordering, inventory — freeing human capacity for what machines still can't do well: service recovery, reading a guest's mood, exception-handling, the moments that actually define a brand. Deployed that way, technology protects hospitality's human differentiator rather than eroding it.

Where this goes wrong is when automation is used to cut headcount rather than reallocate it — bolting low-touch technology onto a relationship-led brand without rethinking the model. That's when "efficiency" starts quietly hollowing out the brand promise.

So: humanless hotels aren't the future of hospitality — they're one viable format within it, strongest in limited-service and extended-stay. Full-service and luxury remain human-led, technology-enabled, because that's where guests are paying for judgement, not just a bed.

Absolutely yes!

But they are a subset of hospitality. Hotels, luxury will always be about the people, but there is need and consumer desire in the right locations and context to have human-less hotels. Context will always play its role. so if a traveller is in for a one night budget stay at an airport do we really need staff? no we dont, check in and out can and should be fully automated as well as physical access. The problem is of course F&B. Modern vending options are becoming better in quality and variations. If a back packer is travelling to London, hotels such as otherwander are perfect. This consumer is super price sensitive and just want a place to leave their stuff and sleep. We still have a long way to go when it comes to hotel classification as humanless hotels will always be reduced down to a one or two star level, when in reality they just meet the consumer needs in the right context. So yes they are part of the future of hospitality

This depends on how you define "hospitality". Real (aka luxury / boutique) hospitality will always be human. That said, for the select / limited service, economy and extended stay categories, hotels will inevitably become vending machines -- humanless, robot-operated and automated in whichever way can improve the P&L without inducing friction during the change process. That said, all hotels will increasingly automate back office tasks in order to make the experience MORE human by shifting labor from rote tasks into more guest-facing roles.

I don't think hospitality is heading towards a future where every hotel replaces people with AI, robotics and automation. Instead, I believe we'll see a new category of fully automated hotels that sits alongside traditional hotels rather than replacing them. 

Just as budget, lifestyle and extended-stay hotels evolved to meet different traveller needs, fully technology-driven hotels will serve guests who prioritise convenience, speed and independence over personal interaction. They are particularly well suited to airport hotels, busy urban locations, remote destinations and the emerging technology-first value segment.

From my perspective, the bigger shift will be the rise of hybrid hotels, where the experience is based on guest preference. Here, technology handles routine and repetitive interactions while people focus on the moments that benefit from human empathy and judgement. Similar to choosing a "quiet ride" in a ride-hailing app, guests indicate the type of experience they want before they arrive. Whether that's a fast, digital check-in with no queues, paperwork and unnecessary interaction, or a more personalised, human-centric welcome.

I see human-less hotels becoming an important growing category, with hybrid operating models likely becoming the norm, allowing technology to enhance convenience and efficiency while people continue to deliver the moments that define true hospitality.

There may be examples of human-less hotels here and there, but to me they feel like someone trying to prove a point rather than create an effective strategy.

Humans have always been, and will continue to be, the face of hospitality. But AI can be the hands that help us deliver on the guest experience in our brand promise. This is especially true at scale, as hotels create increasingly sophisticated offers to bring in more direct business through all distribution channels.

Hotels have historically tried to provide a consistent product; I’m not sure a consistent product will be appreciated as much with AI providing more opportunities for personalization throughout our lives. Guests will expect more, brands will sell more elaborate products to draw in direct business, and hotels will have to deliver. AI can help hotels do that, but efficient delivery without the human element will feel sterile. We need both a face and hands to deliver the best guest experience.

That's a vast overstatement inferred by the question. BUT...

There is some truth in the answer. Three star and below, especially long term stay properties, struggle to maintain profitability with rising payroll and OTA costs, and brand challenges. These small properties have been attempting to manage successfully, sometimes with no staff during the night times. Increased guest service using AI and other forms of automation at inexpensive cost will obviously receive quick acceptance in many of these properties.

Draw a hard line at four and five star properties. Guests pay for superior service in these properties, even if many guests don't use them. Yes, many of us would be happy with current automated services bypassing the desk and responding to requests during their stay. But it would be difficult to image a vacant front desk with a prominent sign stating that all requests must be made using a smartphone. Even with pre-check in, that's a stretch too far.

Perhaps not the future of “hospitality”, but for sure a growing part of “lodging” as an industry. Not every room with a bed offered to a stranger has to run the same business model; there is room (literally) and demand for variations.

 There is a growing segment already staffless – cost effective and perfectly fitting the purpose it is used for. There will also be the other business model, where human service, genuine hospitality and real empathy do work as a successful differentiator. And by the way, both versions can and do exist on both ends of the price/night continuum.

In all cases technology should lead where it does the job better, more efficiently, and humans would not add any value. This sounds obvious, but in reality you will still often find untrained and badly paid humans, doing dreary jobs which (good) technology would do better. Smiling? Rarely, and quite understandably so.

Recent economic pressure, staff shortages and market dynamics will more and more take care of this business model.

AI is visibly taking over multiple operations in hospitality. Restaurants like Wing Factory and Chipotle are using robotic servers and cooks to make and deliver food to customers. And China has already announced its plans to open the world's 1st fully robot-operated hotel by 2027. As we move into the advanced stage of AI use, where service robots can be given human attributes, it's more likely than not that AI in hotels will become the norm. 

Autonomous hotels will certainly be a reality when people get used to autonomous cars, trains, delivery drones, and robotic surgery. It's a behaviour change, and it will happen over time. People are now comfortable operating banks from their smartphones. It's only a matter of time before personal agents handle our travel bookings and agentic commerce. We will soon see our own personal agents doing the check-in and check-out with the property agents. 

Our personal agents will be our guest relationship managers during our stay and our chauffeurs when we drive.

So, to answer the question: are humanless hotels the industry's future? Perhaps not everywhere immediately, nor in all cultures or geographies. But yes, in many segments and countries, it will be the reality.

Not really. The future of hospitality lies in the bifurcation of the hospitality market. On one extreme, we shall have automated (humanless) hotels where all service delivery tasks will be implemented by technology (robots, kiosks, AI apps, autonomous agents, etc.). These smart hotels will offer cheap standardised automated services for the mass market. On the other extreme, we shall have expensive high-touch hotels where guests will be served by human employees. In between, there will be more than fifty shades of grey in the degree of smartness and automation of hotel services. Therefore, humanless hotels will be only one segment in the diverse hotel market.

Are humanless hotels the future? Definitely not as a general standard, but yes for a specific market segment.

We already see this trend clearly in the restaurant industry today. For budget and low-cost hotel segments, removing human interaction will be a necessary step to control rising operational expenses and labor costs. In these specific models, efficiency and price are the only things that matter to the guest.

However, for the rest of the market segments, humans are completely irreplaceable. The real opportunity with AI and automation is not to replace people, but to eliminate the bureaucratic and transactional tasks that staff do today.

For the last 10-15 years, our industry talked a lot about "frictionless" interactions, but we did not have the right tools. Now, with this new era of technology, we finally have the real foundation to achieve it.

The goal is to put administrative tasks completely in the background. This will give our teams the most valuable asset: time. With this time, humans can finally do what they do best: welcome guests, empathize, solve problems, and build genuine hospitality relationships. Thanks to AI, technology will actually make hospitality more human than ever before.

I don't believe the human element in hospitality has a shelf life. Human interaction is what our industry is built on. What has stuck out for me from my time working in hotels is that the technology delivering the most value isn't replacing people, it's freeing them up. Automate the repetitive tasks, and your on-property teams get more time to actually engage with guests and deliver a better experience. The best tech also helps improve those interactions by surfacing actionable guest data before check-in and providing system interfaces that staff can learn in hours, not weeks.

That said, innovation waits for no one, and I expect operators will continue to experiment with plenty of new strategies as technology evolves. I see humanless or fully contactless hotels as edge cases and not becoming the norm. My advice to hoteliers is to put the most impactful technology to work behind the scenes, driving consistency and taking cost out of your operation, while keeping front-of-house warm, welcoming, and unmistakably human. Get that balance right, and that's the fun part!

The future of hospitality is not humanless. Creating a more human-centred business means using technology more intelligently, and that requires infrastructure built for the way AI actually works.

At its core, the question is not human versus humanless. It is whether a hotel's technology actually allows it to choose. Some properties may be designed for highly automated stays, while others will always put more emphasis on personal interaction. That should be a strategic decision based on guest profile and operating model, not a limitation imposed by closed, fragmented systems.

Here lies the real shift: the agentic hotel. AI agents can handle repetitive, process-driven work in the background, from check-ins and room assignments to upsells and billing queries. The goal is not to remove humans, but to free them from operational noise so they can focus on the guest interactions that actually matter.

We have seen this fear before with kiosks and revenue management software. Each new wave of technology prompts concern that hospitality will lose its human touch, yet in practice it removes manual tasks and shifts where people create real value.

The future is not humanless. It is a hotel that knows its guests, empowers its team, and runs on open, agent-ready technology.