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Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

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Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#461

Post by gameman144 »

gtowey wrote: post #306
MarkPNeyer wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s always a trade off between “cost” and everything else. If you’re wealthy enough they cost doesn’t really matter to you, regulation is fine because it leads to higher quality experiences in general. But if you’re not as wealthy, saving money might be more valuable to you than having a room cleaned daily, or having a really nice tv, or a great mattress, etc. Regulation involves a group of people picking one poi…

> But if you’re not as wealthy, saving money might be more valuable to you than having a room cleaned daily, or having a really nice tv, or a great mattress, etc. The problem is that without regulation there is little incentive for business to be honest about the quality of service you're getting. It becomes a race to the bottom as they charge premium prices for cut-rate quality. It's hard for people to take your bus…

> It's hard for people to take your business elsewhere when you need a place to sleep

I think this is actually how most people end up deciding to take their business elsewhere: they give a company their business once, are let down, and decide to never patronize that business or chain again. This is why customer recommendations and reviews hold weight at all -- they help give signal before your first business interaction.

> but fraud is only something you can charge a business with because of regulation.

I don't think almost anyone is in favor of no regulation, only the prescriptive step-by-step guideline regulations. If a hotel says "we have beds!" and then they don't have beds, that's a very different regulatory case than a hotel saying "our bed are comfortable!" and then their beds are not comfortable.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#462

Post by SergeAx »

typest wrote: post #429

There is a take that consistently comes up in discussions like this (and indeed is prominent several times on this post), which says "the problem isn't a shortage of workers, it's that employers don't want to pay workers enough." This seems somewhat limited to me, and there is an alternate explanation I would like to explore. It seems to me rising cost of labor, while good for the people being paid that rising cost,…

I am playing a video game now, where I should run a nation. Most of the game is about making economical tradeoffs. I want a GDP growth, so I have to develop sophisticated industries with higher throughouput. These industries has better margins and can afford better wages. As a result, no one wants to work in agriculture. There are three ways out of it:

1) make agriculture more sophisticated, like automatization, which requires less headcount with higher qualification. It is not easy way, requires lots of gov sposored R&D.

2) make food more expensive. This makes life of everyone worse.

3) import food. This is the easiest way, but you cannot import services (like making beds) - you need to import low-wage workers instead.

So, of course there will be hotels where you have your bed made for you, but those hotels will just be expensive. And, by the way, you may order your masonry to be 3D-printed from cement the way no old day mason can do, but it will be quite expensive too.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#463

Post by clairity »

typest wrote: post #429

There is a take that consistently comes up in discussions like this (and indeed is prominent several times on this post), which says "the problem isn't a shortage of workers, it's that employers don't want to pay workers enough." This seems somewhat limited to me, and there is an alternate explanation I would like to explore. It seems to me rising cost of labor, while good for the people being paid that rising cost,…

alternatively, labor is the only good, which other abstractions (like money) should subserve. the whole point of an economic system is to distribute the rewards of labor across people. most systems (outside idealistic communism) acknowledge that resources will be unevenly distributed, and then focus on the fairness (aka social acceptance) of the chosen distribution, as most people accept that we contribute differing levels of value to the world's production, and so in turn, accept that we get differing levels of benefit from it.

you're getting confused between economies not being zero-sum games in the long term (pie grows/shrinks over time) but do approximate them in the short term (distribution of today's pie). the cost of labor is not going up relative to overall productivity but rather is going down relatively. so where does the surplus end up? concentrated in the hands of people who aren't constrained enough to deploy capital efficiently in an economy.

so in the hotel example, capital is going to owners who are using it to gamble on capital itself rather than going to workers who typically spend the money and help the economy figure out where to invest for long term growth (and health of the economy and society). cost disease is not even applicable here, though rents are. the economy is increasingly seeking economic rents, which are inefficiencies in the economy because rents by definition don't produce anything.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#464

Post by lotsofpulp »

Scoundreller wrote: post #459
lotsofpulp wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are called opaque rates in the business, but not comparable to being able to reserve a hotel room directly via a website for less than the hotel’s own website.

It does mean when people/hotels say “you’ll get the lowest/best rates direct so don’t use an OTA”, that’s a lie/not exactly true. They don’t like it when you book through a travel agent, but they really have a love/hate opinion when you book an express/mystery deal

A reasonable context of “you’ll get the lowest/best rates direct so don’t use an OTA” is reserving a specific type of room at a specific hotel at a specific time.

It is unusual to be willing to gamble on which hotel one is reserving in exchange for an uncertain amount of savings.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#465

Post by otikik »

SoftTalker wrote: post #67
mc32 wrote: post #41

Some cheap European hotels are made like the expensive toilet booths where they basically just hose them down —-no fancy carpeting. All surfaces except the bedding are washable. Makes for easy cleanup and quick turnaround. It’s not for everyone of course.

In Europe it's not uncommon (or at least, it isn't unheard of) to need to bring your own bed sheets and towels from home.

Nope, that’s not a thing

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#467

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

craftkiller wrote: post #456
wenc wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What information will the app have that the hotel wouldn’t have at check in?

You have to provide location access to enable bluetooth which means things like this story of the most unethical thing this former Twitter employee was asked to build are possible: https://twitter.com/stevekrenzel/status/1589700721121058817

Wow, what a story!

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#468

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

scarface74 wrote: post #243
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything and everything the app and its 30 social, ad, and analytics SDKs are able to capture and exfiltrate from the phone. Maybe they won't upload the list of my installed apps (which can leak information like religion or medical issues), maybe they won't track my location through the entire hotel (or everywhere), maybe they won't snoop on my pictures... but maybe they also will, and I don't like maybe. Almost cert…

> Anything and everything the app and its 30 social, ad, and analytics SDKs are able to capture and exfiltrate from the phone. I’m asking about iOS. If you have an Android device - using an operating system written by an ad tech company, the Hilton app is the last thing you should worry about. Instead of being hand wavy, what exactly do you think an analytics SDK can “exfiltrate* from your phone outside of the app sa…

And what if the app asks for access to your contacts? Would you grant it out of the convenience of the app, or would you deny it permission and ask for a card key?

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#469

Post by lotyrin »

typest wrote: post #429

There is a take that consistently comes up in discussions like this (and indeed is prominent several times on this post), which says "the problem isn't a shortage of workers, it's that employers don't want to pay workers enough." This seems somewhat limited to me, and there is an alternate explanation I would like to explore. It seems to me rising cost of labor, while good for the people being paid that rising cost,…

There seems to be an unspoken "for the rich" after lots of your statements here "making society worse off... for the rich". As another commenter mentioned, there is a similar error with regard to masonry of buildings. I would urge you to consider that for a majority of history, a majority of people could never afford any of these things that you are concerned with going extinct. These things are luxuries.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#470

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

Nextgrid wrote: post #207
wenc wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What information will the app have that the hotel wouldn’t have at check in?

IP address, browser/device fingerprint.

Precise locations, time spent at each location. And device information (model, OS), super cookie association. And if it asks permissions: contacts and photos, etc. sounds like parent would grant these permissions out of app love.
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