Room service delivery made easy – with the help of a trusted robot!

The Renaissance Paris La Défense hotel is a 4* luxury hotel located in the heart of Paris, France.

Pierre Brochard, General Manager of the hotel, is passionate about introducing innovative technology to improve efficiency for his staff and guests.  Pierre wanted to explore how introducing robots could improve the day to day operation of maintaining the hotel and serving guests.

The hotel were keen to find a way to offer 24/7 room service, without increasing the workload of the night team.

The Renaissance was one of the first hotels in Europe to use SoftBank Robotics’ tray delivery robot, W3, to deliver items to guest rooms. W3’s ability to navigate the corridors and lifts independently, enabled the hotel to expand its room service offering to 24 hours without increasing the workload of the night team.

Pierre says, “W3 allowed us to have a new analytical way to work in hospitality that we used to not have. It was only about people, now it is about people and data, which is helping us to be definitely more efficient.”

Axel Faust Taieb, Food and Beverage Director at the Renaissance Paris La Défense, believes “the autonomous nature of the W3, and the way it takes lifts on its own and contacts the room by itself is its greatest strength.”

In addition to room service, the hotel has also worked together with SoftBank Robotics and LCS Cleaning to provide autonomous vacuum cleaners to the hotel to help with their daily cleaning service.

Cleaning the 330 guest rooms and 1000 metres squared of meeting space previously  a significant proportion of the cleaning team’s time. They wanted a solution that would enable staff to cut their time spent vacuuming, that didn’t compromise on quality of the clean.

The hotel implemented Whiz, SoftBank Robotics’ autonomous vacuum sweeper, to vacuum the corridors and meeting spaces. Whiz has been able to get on with the vacuuming, whilst the staff focus on other tasks, enabling the spaces to be vacuumed more frequently, improving the cleanliness for guests without additional workload for the staff.

Julie Kuhn,Executive Housekeeper, Renaissance Paris La Défense, says

“If I could describe the robots in one word, it would be efficient. All smart tech and robots help us daily to ensure we are taking the right decisions. Before implementing the technology, it was hard to measure productivity and now we have a new analytical way of working in hospitality. It was about people and now it’s about people and data, which helps us to be more efficient.”