Will this little box really transport us to a tropical beach? (Photo: Marriott Hotels)

The latest hospitality trend these days is taking extreme, and often unnecessary, measures to impress hotel guests. We’re not talking basic room upgrades and an artisanal chocolate on your pillow.

We’re talking teleportation chambers and robot butlers.

In some ways, we commend these hotels for making such an effort and introducing us to unique experiences. But we also wonder if it’s really worth all the money they are spending.

Last week, Marriott began offering guests teleportation. Sort of. Marriott’s latest publicity stunt is the teleporter, based in Oculus Rift technology. It transports guests to Maui and London in a fully immersive 4D virtual reality experience. All you have to do is step inside the booth.

To be fair, the teleporter is an interesting step in the right direction of revolutionizing in-room entertainment in hotels, but it still feels awfully gimmicky. Check out eight other ways hotels are trying to attract attention these days.

1. Robots!

Great for robot selfies, but not much else.

Only a month before Marriott launched the teleporter, robots invaded a Starwood hotel. Starwood is testing new robot butlers at its Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, California, and plansto expand to the rest of Starwood’s hotels in 2015. Aptly named Botlrs, these machines can navigate the hotel and fulfill guest requests, allowing the actual humans working to spend their time doing other things.

Forget the robot butler, though. How about a robot that records your sleep? It’s not as creepy as it sounds; there is no actual robot in the room with you. For their Sleep Art campaign, a few Ibis hotels filled select beds with sensors that send signals as you sleep to a robot that turns those signals into art. It actually sounds pretty amazing, albeit extreme and a little uncomfortable.

Source: www.yahoo.com