The Digital Receptionist Gaining Ground

'Hello! I am Lara, your receptionist. Welcome to Brasov!'

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 23.08.2022, 14:00

‘Hello! I am Lara, your receptionist. Welcome to Brasov!’. This is how an application greets the guests of the hotel where it is being tested. After the tourist says ‘check in’ to the app, Lara tells them what documents they need, and how to scan them. It is the same for check out or payment. Check in takes about 40 seconds. And, since the pandemic, the hospitality industry lost a great deal of staff, who had to migrate to other sectors, digitization can help tourism managers, who have to make do with fewer people.

Christian Macedonschi, president of the Smart City Association, told us about the Lara app:

“This is the first digital receptionist, but at the same time concierge, because Lara offers not only automated check-in and check-out, it also scans QR codes, scans the Green Certificate, scans identity cards, passports, offers the possibility for card payment, issues key cards, or, in the future, will allow the phone to act as a key card. It also offers important tourism services,which is why I am saying it can act as a concierge for our guests. It offers entrance tickets to Bran Castle, to the aquaparks, the dinosaur parks, the cable car, because the location where Lara is being tested is right at the foot of the mountain. There we have a beautiful cable car, there are long lines, so tourists, through Lara, can buy tickets and save time. They also offer bike rental services, car rental, hiring guides, a number of tourist services, so that Brasov may become the first smart tourist city in Romania. And I will tell you our target in Brasov: to apply for the title of European Smart Tourist Capital.

Just as there are already meat slicing robots in kebab shops, or robots who serve in restaurants, great things are in store for Lara. We found out that Lara is an application made by and IT company in Brasov, a Romanian-Swiss joint venture. Chrstian Macedonschi explained what plans they have to develop Lara’s services:

“We developed Lara together with Advanced Robotics not to replace the human receptionists, but to help them. They work together excellently. Lara is learning foreign languages, right now she can speak English, Romanian, and German. Next we plan on having French, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, it is a learning process. The next step is to place next to Lara a coffee machine, so Lara can invite tourists to sit down for coffee.

For the first two months, Lara is in a learning process. Christian Macedonschi explains:

“Lara is basically a tourist concierge, and this learning process should happen in contacts with partners, service suppliers, cleaning services, massage, or sports. This is a lengthy process. In addition, we work on the languages that Lara has to know, and we learn from the market,we learn what services the tourists would like Lara to provide. We have this pilot learning process of two months. The reactions are extraordinary, the demand is huge. Lara won’t be for sale, in principle it will be rented by hotel managers, who can save on the night receptionist, or a second or third one. It is not only about saving, it is the fact that it is hard to find well-trained and educated staff as receptionists. This year we hope to restart the engines of tourism, and since necessary staff is not available, Lara comes to the rescue.

Lara is the first digital concierge and receptionist in Europe, and soon the trial period comes to an end, so it will be ready to take over not only Romania, but also Europe, as its creators hope. So far it was noticeable that tourists are pleasantly surprised by digital hospitality services, because they are so used to digital services in so many other areas.