There’s a new wave of automation coming, and we believe that it will bring first-class luxury experiences within reach of most hoteliers and guests for the very first time.
Triptease was founded on a very simple idea. We believe direct is best. We believe the best place to buy a hotel room online is from the hotel itself. When a customer and a hotel transact together, everybody benefits. So, our strategy is simple. We want to shift the world to direct by dramatically improving the guest experience for direct bookers.
Automation has been an obvious tactic for us, both because of the benefits it can bring to the guest but also because of the weight it can lift from the shoulders of already over-encumbered hoteliers. So let’s talk about what automation means.
Automation is nothing new
A lot of the time when we think about automation we think about robots, like Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini robot dog. It’s undeniably a little unnerving to see a robot dog turning a handle and opening the door. These machines have learned to navigate their environment. They’ve worked out how to do it themselves – and for me, the really scary thing is that they’re working as a team! There’s a huge fear of the unknown that arrives whenever we see something like this. Where will it lead us?
Let’s look back at automation through history before we get too caught up in our existential dread.
Automation is nothing new, and it’s definitely not all about robots. Indeed, automation is arguably what makes us fundamentally human. Technical progress has been nothing if not a steady march of automating increasingly complex repetitive tasks. Rather than ripping our hands to shreds trying to do everything ourselves, we have always worked to delegate that burden to technology. As humans we’re constantly looking to drive efficiency to free up our time to do other things. Automation is the drumbeat of human progress.
But, just like the knee-jerk jolt of unease most of us get when we watch those clever robot dogs opening a door, there has always been a fear of automation. Think of the Luddites. In case you haven’t been brushing up on your history recently, the Luddites were highly-skilled artisanal cloth weavers in the early 19th century. They were particularly upset about the mechanization of the loom and how it enabled unskilled laborers to manufacture cloth. So, they smashed the looms. As a result, ‘Luddite’ has become a byword for people who aren’t too happy about technological advancement. In the 21st century, their place has been taken in part by headline writers:
