Holograms at Front Desk Replace People at Aiden by Best Western

25.08.2023 - 14:01 / skift.com / Justin Dawes

CIC Hospitality is opening 30 boutique Aiden by Best Western hotels in Scandinavia, but they won’t come with staff in the flesh and blood standing at the front desk. 

Instead, the front desks will be manned by holograms. 

The first hologram system, made by the startup Holoconnects, was installed last month into the new Aiden hotel in Herning, Denmark. BWH Hotel Group owns the Aiden brand, and CIC is the operator. 

After walking through the front door and past a motion detector, the guest is greeted with a pre-recorded hologram video that’s projected into a Holobox, the hologram box that is over 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide and contains a touchscreen that’s 86 inches tall.

The guest is then presented with options on the touchscreen, such as pre-recorded information about the hotel. The guest can indicate if help is needed from a live person, and then a customer service worker is able to connect remotely and appear as a hologram within the box. 

Having a hologram at the front could be passed off as a gimmick at first, but it plays into the operator’s long-term strategy of increasing efficiency while maintaining a personal touch, according to Thomas Furulund, operations manager for Oslo-based CIC Hospitality. That’s an issue the industry has been grappling with for years.

“Our main target is to have no administration tasks at the hotels. For customer satisfaction but also to operate our hotel more cost efficiently,” Furulund said. “Our on-site staff should basically play shuffleboard and drink coffee with our guests instead of doing the traditional tasks.”

CIC is posting a job soon for the first worker to be the hologram face for the company. 

CIC plans to install the boxes in eight Aiden hotels this year, with the aim to include them at all 30 Aiden hotels coming online in Scandinavia. 

The plan is that one staffer from a central location can answer emails and calls, and service hologram boxes as needed, for five hotels. 

Furulund said CIC wants to create “small magical moments” for guests, but the practical use for them is even more important because of financial struggles and a hospitality workforce shortage following the pandemic. 

“You should not just buy tech to buy tech; there has to be a clear strategy behind it,” Furulund said. 

“I think it’s a balance between the five-star hotel and the ones that are fully automated. We are in between those segments. And for us, it’s important that we do not remove the human contact but try to be creative and find another way to have the human connection.”

Furulund was introduced to Holoconnects through a post on Linkedin. He emailed his manager at 3 a.m., and the conversation began. 

“We quickly decided that this is something for the future,” Furulund said. 

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