

Why don’t hotels use Roombas? - bootload
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/why-dont-hotels-use-roombas/

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jrockway
This article was already discussed today, and then it was killed.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=264808>

Incidentally, the discussion there is much more intelligent than what's here
right now. It's a shame that article was killed.

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mattmaroon
Why was it killed? It definitely seems to fit the criteria of "stuff
interesting to hackers". I mean, it's robots.

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pchristensen
Let's play Ask Matt Maroon: <http://mattmaroon.com/?p=416>

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unalone
Matt Maroon, you're a fun guy. (But your category links are all broken.)

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abstractbill
The comments links are all broken too, at least for me.

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jrockway
Actually, all of his links are broken. Everything goes to the main page.

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mattmaroon
They seem to work for me. What browser are you using (FF3 here). Perhaps it
was a temporary problem due to one of my plugins.

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jrockway
Also on FF3. If I click any link (say, "Twitter Revisited"), I just get your
latest article. The URL bar changes, but the content doesn't.

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mattmaroon
Thanks for letting me know guys. I'll try to figure out what the hell is wrong
with it. Everything works fine for me in both browsers and Safari on my Mac,
even after clearing cache, switching to/from OpenDNS, etc.

I need to just hire someone to make me a custom theme anyway.

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donw
Another couple of possibilities:

1\. The cleaning staff management has their offices located in the 19th
century.

2\. Roombas are easy to steal. Even in the nicer hotels, the paintings are
bolted to the walls. Free-roaming robots that can fit in a suitcase? I think
not.

3\. Durability may be a concern.

4\. Room turnover needs to happen very, very quickly, and so hotels are
waiting for the 'Roomba-SS', because they need supercharged V8 cleaning power.

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mattmaroon
Theft is a huge problem, especially for the only inanimate object that could
be plausibly said to have ran away on its own. The hotel can, of course, bill
you, but you can just dispute the charges.

The guest only has to convince his credit card company that there was no
Roomba when he got there. Given the state of charge backs in the industry
today, that would be a shoe-in. You probably could convince them there was no
painting if you stole that and tried.

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noonespecial
Roombas are slow, fragile, and don't actually vacuum very well. They are
costly to buy, maintain and replace.

Minimum wage labor is cheap, easy to find and easy to replace. Its usually
fast and does a pretty good job of vacuuming.

Add to that that roombas need a lot of "support" to run. (Empty, charge, clean
out when jammed with crud, send back when broken) and its WAY easier to point
to an old hoover and make vacuuming motions and them point to the rooms than
to explain to someone how to use a roomba. (Especially around a potential
language barrier.)

The robots are coming, but not until they are tele-operated under contract
(like ADT does for security) and the hotel staff doesn't even have to think
about them. They just pay their "vacuum bill" and it happens.

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Flemlord
Because Roombas don't work very well.

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snorkel
Bingo! Anyone who has seen room service in action knows housekeeping spends
about 80 seconds spot vacuuming each room where Roomba wanders around
aimlessly for about 30 minutes.

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Xichekolas
... because people would be stepping on them all the time.

I could list other reasons, but I guess Matt Maroon beat me too it.

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aggieben
#5 and #7 are the only items on the list that make good sense.

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maxklein
They are slow, that's why.

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k4st
... because a Roomba can only vacuum and do nothing else.

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cypress-hill
immigrant labor is cheap, plentiful, and scrubs toilets too

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lliiffee
I think this is the crucial point. Probably the people who clean hotels do not
usually buy Roombas. If a lawyer buys a Roomba, they are saving time that is
worth 100/hour (or whatever). If a hotel buys a Roomba, they are saving time
worth 10/hour (or whatever). A very different calculation.

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mattmaroon
At the same time, even if you assume the lawyer could spend his vacuuming time
working instead (not exactly a safe assumption, as I learned the hard way
once) the hotel laborer easily spends more than 10x the amount of time
vacuuming that the lawyer does.

