Setting the stage
It’s Tuesday morning in a Helsinki hotel, the year is 2028. Seven staff members gather for the shift meeting. Six drink coffee. One doesn’t drink anything, doesn’t sit down, and will work a double shift without complaint.
Nobody finds this remarkable anymore – it’s 2028, after all.
The robot—some call it ”the robot,” others insist on ”Robbe” because everything deserves a name—has been part of the team for eighteen months. It collects breakfast dishes, answers Wi-Fi password questions at reception, and occasionally entertains children in the lobby by dancing on command. The newest staff member barely remembers the hotel without it. The longest-serving receptionist still finds the whole situation faintly absurd but admits the morning rush runs smoother when she’s not interrupted every ninety seconds with ”Where’s the sauna?”
This is where we’re headed. Not dramatically, not suddenly, but through small accumulations of change that stop feeling like change and start feeling like Tuesday morning.
How we got here
The path here started with experiments. In autumn 2025, we tested the Keenon T5 mobile robot across three Helsinki locations through Haaga-Helia’s HosByte project: Unity Helsinki’s hotel and co-working space, Eurohostel, and Linnanmäki amusement park’s Hurlumhei restaurant during the annual Light Carnival. The experiments aimed to evaluate the robot’s capabilities within dynamic service environments while identifying new use cases.
What emerged revealed human adaptation. Research confirms what observation suggests: positive emotional responses to robots—excitement, sympathy, even happiness—increase willingness to engage. The robot’s social presence—its expressive behaviors and approachable design—actively shapes how humans perceive and accept mechanical agents in spaces we previously reserved for human interaction alone.
The robot, it turned out, was not the variable being tested. We were.
Unity Helsinki: when silence becomes strategy
Unity Helsinki presented an immediate paradox. The space combines hotel accommodation with co-working facilities—environments with fundamentally different acoustic needs. Half the occupants seek interaction and energy. Half demand silence and concentration. The robot was designed for restaurants, noisy and energetic spaces where sound is part of the atmosphere. How does it function where half the room wears noise-canceling headphones?
The solution came through constraint rather than addition. Audio playback was intentionally avoided in the co-working area. Many individuals use headphones or earplugs, yet sound-based communication could still disrupt the delicate acoustic balance these spaces require. Communication happened entirely through the screen interface.
The robot collected used coffee cups, frequently abandoned by co-working users deep in their work. Simple labor, repetitive labor, the kind that accumulates invisibly through a day and drains energy without contributing meaning. During breakfast service, it assisted with dish collection. At reception, it adopted a concierge role, welcoming guests and providing frequently requested information when the desk was unattended. Directions to the co-working space and sauna. The Wi-Fi password. Those small details that take thirty seconds to answer but interrupt the flow of more complex guest interactions.
These weren’t revolutionary applications. They were practical ones, revealing a pattern worth examining: robots work best not by doing novel things, but by absorbing the draining tasks that prevent humans from focusing on work that requires presence, creativity, and genuine connection.
Nobody dreams of collecting coffee cups for a living. Yet someone must collect them. Who wants to memorize the Wi-Fi password and repeat it endlessly like a parrot? The question becomes: who should spend their energy on tasks that demand no human insight, and who should save that energy for moments that do?
Eurohostel: the day a robot got a name
At Eurohostel, the robot performed standard work. It welcomed guests, shared information about hostel services and sustainability practices, including recycling, and answered frequently asked questions, such as public transportation guidance. It promoted optional services—breakfast, sauna, late checkout. Guests scrolled through the interface, discovering available information. Competent functionality, professionally executed, ultimately forgettable.
Then something shifted after the first days of deployment. They renamed the robot EuRobot. They decorated it with colorful stickers aligned with the hostel’s visual identity. They gave it a name tag and crafted a distinctive tone of voice to support a fictional personality.
This matters more than it might initially appear. When staff name something, when they dress it to match their space, when they craft its communication style to reflect how they actually speak to guests—they’re claiming ownership.
The robot stopped being a generic device and became part of Eurohostel’s specific identity. Guests responded by photographing EuRobot, mentioning it on social media, asking staff about it. The robot became part of the hostel’s story without anyone planning for brand marketing. It happened organically because people relate differently to something that belongs somewhere rather than something that could belong anywhere.
By 2028, this pattern repeats across hospitality environments. Robots don’t arrive as blank slates anymore. They arrive wearing local colors, speaking in tones that match their homes, carrying names that staff choose rather than manufacturers assign. A generic robot processes transactions efficiently. A robot that belongs somewhere creates experience memorably.
Linnanmäki: when chaos becomes the point
The customization experiment continued at Linnanmäki’s Hurlumhei restaurant during the Light Carnival. The robot was adapted to reflect the restaurant’s playful identity. Decorative stickers and a party hat were added. The robot—renamed HupiBotti for this location—delivered food and retrieved dishes in an environment where the primary customer segment, children, behaves with delightful unpredictability.
Children are truth-tellers about technology. They don’t pretend to be impressed by features they don’t care about. They respond to what actually captures attention. HupiBotti captured attention through simple presence—a robot wearing a party hat, moving between tables, belonging to the carnival atmosphere.
The robot performed successfully in this dynamic environment, frequently triggering what observers called a ”wow effect” from both children and parents, who perceived its presence as a joyful addition to the dining experience.
But here’s where it got interesting. Queues formed regularly at the counter for service—standard hospitality friction where wait time feels longest when you’re standing still doing nothing. HupiBotti was positioned at the entrance with a special ”dance mode” accessible via touchscreen. Guests could take a complimentary chocolate and press the button to watch the robot perform. This playful interaction encouraged active engagement from children and parents while simultaneously entertaining other guests waiting in line.
The queue length remained unchanged. The experience of waiting in that queue transformed completely. Previous research suggests that in environments shared by adults and children, entertainment and functionality should be thoughtfully balanced. Linnanmäki confirmed this in practice while revealing something deeper: the robot played fundamentally different roles in different contexts.
These experiments also revealed practical realities that sales brochures skip. Monthly leasing costs for a Keenon T5 in Finland range from a few hundred to about a thousand euros—the visible expense. The hidden cost comes from hours spent learning robot coordination: programming routes for Unity’s silent co-working space, writing dozens of screen messages that match Eurohostel’s voice, troubleshooting why HupiBotti stopped unexpectedly mid-carnival crowd. Someone becomes the unofficial robot coordinator, discovering that children press every reachable button and guests load trays incorrectly. Despite this learning curve — like onboarding any new team member — the return on investment remained positive because the robot took on repetitive tasks while staff focused on genuine guest connection.
So, three locations, three experiements. Unity needed silence and subtlety. Eurohostel asked for personality that matched its hostel culture. Linnanmäki needed entertainment energy that fit a carnival setting. Same robot, different jobs, different relationships with the spaces and people it served. The robot doesn’t determine its role. The context does. We do
What we’re building when we add robots to teams
By 2028, these patterns become normal practice instead of experiments. The HosByte project explores smart omnichannel sales in hospitality, and robots are part of that ecosystem. At Eurohostel, the robot promoted additional services. Guests who interacted with its screen saw breakfast options, sauna availability, late checkout possibilities. Some purchased these services. The robot influenced revenue without appearing to ”sell” anything aggressively—it simply made information available when guests were already engaged and curious.
This capability expands naturally as technology matures. Robots learn which guests engage with which services based on interaction patterns. They surface relevant offers at appropriate moments. They function as always-available sales channels that never feel pushy because they respond to guest-initiated interest rather than interrupting with unwanted pitches.
The technology exists now. Adoption speed depends less on technical readiness and more on conceptual readiness—recognizing that robots aren’t just labor replacement devices but relationship interfaces that free humans for higher-value interaction while maintaining constant service availability.
But technology alone solves nothing, a truth these experiments reinforced repeatedly. Unity taught us that robots must adapt to each environment’s acoustic and social requirements. Eurohostel taught us that customization and local identity matter profoundly for engagement. Linnanmäki taught us that context determines whether entertainment or efficiency should lead, and that the best applications often demand both in thoughtful balance.
The teams we’re building today shape hospitality’s next decade. Some team members will work without breaks or complaints. Some will handle the tasks nobody volunteers for. Some will simply show up, day after day, reliably present.
Back to the beginning
The 2028 staff meeting continues. The conversation turns to scheduling next month’s shifts. Someone mentions that Robbe could cover an extra evening if needed, no overtime required. Another staff member jokes that Robbe never calls in sick either. Everyone laughs, but they adjust the schedule accordingly.
The robot doesn’t care whether it collects coffee cups or delivers breakfast. It performs its programmed function without preference or pride. What we choose to program, where we choose to deploy it, and how we choose to customize it—these decisions reveal not what robots can do, but what we believe humans should spend their finite energy doing instead.
Perhaps that reliability is exactly what allows the rest of the team to focus on what actually matters: the encounters that transform ordinary stays into experiences guests remember long after checkout, the conversations that solve real problems, the moments of genuine connection that technology can support but never replace.
The future arrives quietly, in ordinary moments that stop feeling extraordinary. Tuesday morning staff meetings where one team member doesn’t drink coffee, and everyone’s fine with that.
Hosbyte
HosByte: Smart Omnichannel Sales for the Hospitality Sector project at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences (9/2024-8/2026) supports profitable and responsible growth for hospitality SMEs in the Uusimaa region through research and development in platform economy, AI, service robotics, and XR technologies. The project is co-funded by the European Union and Helsinki-Uusimaa Regional Council.
Joel Pakalén, Thomas Kingelin, Terhi Oksanen-Alén and Sonja Haaksluoto are senior lecturers at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, while Elina Moreira Kares works as a project specialist and Macarena Jiménez Nogales as a project assistant for Hosbyte.
