Your Hotel Concierge Is Probably A Texting Robot

Your next hotel’s concierge might not be in the same time zone as your room. Or sentient.

Larger chains and smaller inns are moving past the custom of having guests press “0” on a landline phone to ask for that extra towel. Instead, properties have turned to text messages. That means requests could get answered by someone in another state, a bot or a digital spider monkey.

Photographer Andrew Gallery requested a bottle opener and extra glasses at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in California via the hotel’s Chat Your Service app during a recent stay. “I just feel like it’s some happy person who is down to help,” says Mr. Gallery, who lives in Los Angeles, of the help he received. “But I’m not 100% sure if it’s people on the other end.”

The Loews uses off-site employees 2,000 miles away to answer texts or phone calls, says manager Lara Loewl, who oversees a staff of 14 agents at the company’s engagement center in Franklin, Tenn. Most guests never think to ask who is answering them, she says.

These staffers field common requests, including housekeeping or restaurant reservations, within minutes, without involving the hotel’s concierge team. The team isn’t quick to share their actual location. “We always say we’re an extension of the front desk,” she says.

This shift to texting and automated responses has happened as a way to cope with staffing shortages, hotel executives say. Some services are offered via artificial intelligence.

“It’s easier to get their needs met and it’s less intrusive,” says Tina Edmundson, global brand and marketing officer at Marriott International Inc., based in Bethesda, Md.

The volume of texts sent via Marriott’s app tripled in 2021 from the year prior, with some hotels needing to reshuffle staff duties to meet the needs of guests, Ms. Edmundson says. For the past six years, Marriott brands, including Moxy Hotels and Westin, have offered guests the option to use the Marriott Bonvoy app to communicate directly with hotel staff. Text replies come from a mix of hotel staffers and automated responses, based on the request.

On a weekend trip to Mexico, Tracy Shaw was ready for “a break from everything”—even talking to the hotel staff. The Encantada hotel in Tulum let her text them instead.

Throughout the long weekend, Ms. Shaw, a 45-year-old marketing manager from Tampa, Fla., used WhatsApp to request morning coffee on her terrace, strawberry margaritas at the beach and predinner tequila shots in her room. Dashing off texts was less awkward than calling the front desk, she says. “This is not something I’d pick up the phone for,” says Ms. Shaw, who stayed at the hotel with her husband in December. “We were totally spoiled.”

Cassie Down, a publicist who checked into the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, was relieved to find “Rose,” which the hotel describes as the “resident mischief-maker and digital concierge” answering her requests. Ms. Down, who tested positive for Covid-19 shortly after checking in for her family vacation and “couldn’t roll over to pick up the phone,” was less self-conscious about making requests by text.

Ms. Down says “Rose” texted her that “when I’m in a good mood, I tend to be generous with friends.” The bot helped arrange delivery of two nights of pizza dinners and a tube of toothpaste from the sundries shop downstairs, and relayed Ms. Down’s request for the extra towels and tissues to be left at the door. “Honestly, she was so chic and witty,” says Ms. Down, 30, who lives in San Diego.

Real-estate broker Susan Harrison spent the weekend of New Year’s exchanging texts with “Johnnie Brown,” a computerized spider monkey at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla. Ms. Harrison, who lives in New York, enjoyed that all the messages she received were signed with a monkey emoji in a cheery tone. Her requests about Advil, exercises classes and dinner reservations were addressed in minutes. After booking a table for 8 people, she was assured that she would be “seated at the winning table.”

The hotel, which has had the monkey as its mascot since 2016, says guests like the efficiency of texting, an option it started offering in 2020.

Hyatt Hotels is deploying Medallia Zingle, text-messaging software, across more than 1,000 hotels in 68 countries. Employees are encouraged to show personality, including using emojis or lighthearted language whenever possible, says Julia Vander Ploeg, Hyatt’s global head of digital and technology. The top request is for bottled water.

Concierges at the Pendry Chicago refer to guests by their last name and a title via text, use signoffs that include “at your service” and are careful to scan for typos. Emojis and informal greetings are effectively banned, concierge Alex Yu says.

Some guests admit they miss the small talk. After using text to arrange rides within the Resort at Paws Up, a 37,000-acre luxury ranch in Greenough, Mont. Rich Burt, a retired audio engineer from Orlando, Fla., realized he needed more than just efficiency. The three-word texts he exchanged with his driver were convenient, but he prefers picking up the phone and talking about his day. “I’m more old-fashioned,” he says.

Raj Singh created an AI-powered concierge named Ivy that is used in 3,000 hotels. He estimates that roughly half of hotels offer messaging services. Mr. Singh, now chief strategy officer at Revinate, a hotel software provider based in San Francisco, says texting with Ivy is meant to feel like texting with a fun, in-the-know friend.

But even the best chatbots stumble at some queries. A recent one: “Actually, this might be a weird question…are the bathroom windows see-through from outside?” Ivy referred that query to a human.

They call themselves TikTok refugees—and the app they are fleeing to is a lot more Chinese than the video-sharing app whose U.S. fate now hangs in the balance.

After Supreme Court justices Friday seemed inclined to let stand a law that would shut down TikTok in the U.S., the Chinese social-media platform Xiaohongshu , translated in English as Little Red Book, has received a flood of American TikTok users. They are looking for a sanctuary or a way to protest the potentially imminent TikTok ban—never mind that they don’t speak Chinese.

Charlotte Silverstein, a 32-year-old publicist in Los Angeles, downloaded Xiaohongshu on Sunday night after seeing videos on TikTok about migrating to the app, which Americans dubbed “RedNote.” She described the move as a “last act of defiance” in her frustration about the potential TikTok ban.

“Everyone has been super welcoming and sweet,” said Silverstein, who has made three posts so far. “I love the sense of community that I’m seeing already.”

By Monday, TikTok refugees had pushed Xiaohongshu to the top of the free-app chart on Apple ’s App Store.

“I’m really nervous to be on this app, but I also find it to be really exciting and thrilling that we’re all doing this,” one new Xiaohongshu user said in a video clip on Sunday. “I’m sad that TikTok might actually go, but if this is where we’re gonna be hanging out, welcome to my page!” Within a day, the video had more than 3,000 comments and 6,000 likes. And the user had amassed 24,000 followers.

Neither Xiaohongshu nor TikTok responded to requests for comment.

The flow of refugees, while serving as a symbolic dissent against TikTok’s possible shutdown, doesn’t mean Xiaohongshu can easily serve as a replacement for Americans. TikTok says it has 170 million users in the U.S., and it has drawn many creators who take advantage of the app’s features to advertise and sell their products.

Most of the content on Xiaohongshu is in Chinese and the app doesn’t have a simple way to auto-translate the posts into English.

At a time of a strained U.S.-China relationship, some new Chinese-American friendships are budding on an app that until now has had few international users.

“I like that two countries are coming together,” said Sarah Grathwohl, a 32-year-old marketing manager in Seattle, who made a Xiaohongshu account on Sunday night. “We’re bonding over this experience.”

Granthwohl doesn’t speak Chinese, so she has been using Google Translate for help. She said she isn’t concerned about data privacy and would rather try a new Chinese app than shift her screentime to Instagram Reels.

Another opportunity for bonding was a photo of English practice questions from a Chinese textbook, with the caption, “American please.” American Xiaohongshu users helped answer the questions in the comments, receiving a “thank u Honey,” from the person who posted the questions.

By Monday evening, there have been more than 72,000 posts with the hashtag #tiktokrefugee on Xiaohongshu, racking up some 34 million views.

In an English-language post titled “Welcome TikTok refugees,” posted by a Shanghai-based Xiaohongshu user, an American user responded in Chinese with a cat photo and the words, “Thank you for your warm welcome. Everyone is so cute. My cat says thanks, too.” The user added, “I hope this is the correct translation.”

Some Chinese users are also using the livestreaming function to invite TikTok migrants to chat. One chat room hosted by a Chinese English tutor had more than 179,900 visits with several Americans exchanging cultural views with Chinese users.

ByteDance-owned TikTok isn’t available in China but has a Chinese sister app, Douyin. American users can’t download Douyin, though; unlike Xiaohongshu, it is only accessible from Chinese app stores.

On Xiaohongshu, Chinese users have been sharing tutorials and tips in English for American users on how to use the app. Meanwhile, on TikTok, video clips have also multiplied over the past two days teaching users the correct pronunciation of Xiaohongshu—shau-hong-SHOO—and its culture.

Xiaohongshu may be new to most Americans, but in China, it is one of the most-used social-media apps. Backed by investors like Chinese tech giants Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group , Xiaohongshu is perhaps best described as a Chinese mix of Instagram and Reddit and its users increasingly treat it as a search engine for practical information.

Despite its Little Red Book name, Xiaohongshu has little in common with the compilation of Mao Zedong ’s political writings and speeches. In fact, the app aspires to be a guidebook about anything but politics.

Conceived as a shopping guide for affluent urbanites in 2013, Xiaohongshu has morphed into a one-stop shop for lifestyle and shopping recommendations. Every day, its more than 300 million users, who skew toward educated young women, create, share and search for posts about anything from makeup tutorials to career-development lessons, game strategies or camping skills.

Over the years, Xiaohongshu users have developed a punchy writing style, with posts accompanied by images and videos for an Instagram feel.

Chinese social-media platforms are required to watch political content closely. Xiaohongshu’s focus on lifestyle content, eschewing anything that might seem political, makes it less of a regulatory target than a site like Weibo , which in 2021 was fined at least $2.2 million by China’s cyberspace watchdog for disseminating “illegal information.”

“I don’t expect to read news or discussion of serious issues on Xiaohongshu,” said Lin Ying, a 26-year-old game designer in Beijing.

The American frenzy over a Chinese app is the reverse of a migration in recent years by Chinese social-media users seeking refuge from censorship on Western platforms , such as X, formerly known as Twitter, or, more recently, BlueSky.

Just like TikTok users who turn to the app for fun, Xiaohongshu users also seek entertainment through livestreams and short video clips as well as photos and text-posts on the platform.

Xiaohongshu had roughly 1.3 million U.S. mobile users in December, according to market-intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which estimates that U.S. downloads of the app in the week ending Sunday almost tripled compared with the week before.

Sensor Tower data indicates that Xiaohongshu became the top-ranked social-networking and overall free app on Apple’s App Store and the 8th top-ranked social app on the Google Play Store on Monday, “a feat it has never achieved before,” said Abe Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower.

Run by Shanghai-based Xingin Information Technology, Xiaohongshu makes money primarily from advertising, according to a Xiaohongshu spokeswoman. The company was valued at $17 billion after its latest round of private-equity investment in the summer, according to research firm PitchBook Data.

Not everyone is singing kumbaya. Some Chinese Xiaohongshu users are worried about the language barrier. And some American TikTok users are concerned about data safety on the Chinese app.

But many are hoping to build bridges between the two countries.

“Y’all might think Americans are hateful because of how our politicians are, but I promise you not all of us are like that,” one American woman said on a Sunday video she posted on Xiaohongshu with Chinese subtitles.

She went on to show how to make cheese quesadillas using a waffle maker.

The video collected more than 11,000 likes and 3,000 comments within 24 hours. “It’s so kind of you to use Chinese subtitles,” read one popular comment posted by a user from Sichuan province.

Another Guangdong-based user commented with a bilingual “friendly reminder”: “On Chinese social-media platforms please do not mention sensitive topics such as politics, religion and drugs!!!”

Your Hotel Concierge Is Probably A Texting Robot

The hospitality industry is shifting automated text responses to communicate with guests.

Chinese users of Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book, welcome Americans fleeing a feared TikTok ban