Klaas Koerten
Klaas Koerten researches the influence of technology on the hospitality industry. After graduating in mechanical engineering at the TU Delft, he started working at Hotelschool The Hague in 2021 in a collaboration with RoboHouse to study hospitality robotics. After three years of executing various research projects, he started his four year Professional Doctorate (PD) at the end of 2024focused on developing technologies to improve working conditions for housekeeping employees.
The research domain where hospitality and robotics meet is quite diverse, as for each task in a hotel, you can theoretically dream up a robot performing it. Since the hospitality robotics project started, we have performed research on reception robots, automated check in booths, restaurant robots and room service robots. We also started on the development of novel technologies to be used in housekeeping departments that are not necessarily robotic. Hospitality also has this complex human- technology interaction side to it where there is not only employees that need to work with the robot, but also guests, and it is this guest interaction that is most critical for many hotel companies.
The hospitality robotics research line started out by performing experiments with two existing robots in hospitality contexts that took over a task and finding the effect they have on guest experience and hotels. However, it has grown into something much more substantial than simple replacement of human work. I am currently focused on personnel shortages, which is one of the most pressing issues of hospitality companies. By looking at the underlying working conditions that employees experience in hospitality, and finding technologies to improve those, we can work toward a substantial solution of personnel shortages.
My interest used to be just technology. However, after my graduation project on human-machine interactions, I have found out that designing technologic solutions is one thing, but tailoring it to the needs of the humans that will use it is quite a different challenge. Hospitality robotics will always be used in a working environment where they need to operate alongside humans. How these interactions are designed and how they influence a hospitality venue are really interesting subjects to explore and Hotelschool The Hague offers the possibility to perform actual experiments in a working environment.