Courtesy of Otonomous Hotel
An artist’s rendering depicts the exterior of the completed Otonomus Hotel. Slated to open in February 2025, the property — a hybrid hotel-apartment complex — will be located on 13 acres at the corner of Russell Road and Decatur Boulevard, not far from Allegiant Stadium.
Monday, June 17, 2024 | 2 a.m.
While a rental-property company like Airbnb gives customers a variety of places to stay, from a studio apartment to a six-bedroom villa and anywhere in between, it cannot guarantee consistency in the guest’s experience.
And, while a classic hotel brand may be able to do the latter, it can usually only offer guests a limited amount of physical space.
Otonomus Hotel hopes to bridge the gap between the two.
The new hospitality concept, coming to Las Vegas in less than a year, will offer guests the ability to book a number of rooms, while also utilizing artificial intelligence to personalize and enhance their experience.
“So it’s really all these layers that the hospitality industry is missing today,” said Philippe Ziade, CEO and Founder of developer Growth Holdings. “That’s what we’re bringing with the concept. It’s really the best value product on the market — that’s how we see it. Where it gives you the best of both worlds.”
Slated to open in February 2025, the property — a hybrid hotel-apartment complex — will be located on 13 acres at the corner of Russell Road and Decatur Boulevard, not far from Allegiant Stadium.
It’s the first-ever AI-powered hotel, claimed Ziade, with proprietary AI technology to do so.
“We are different to start with, because we are developers as well as technology developers — not just real estate — so that makes us very unique in connecting these minds across these different industries to create that new concept,” he said, adding that Otonomus is slated to featured at CES, the massive annual trade show from the Consumer Technology Association.
Otonomus has essentially been built as a Class A apartment complex, he said.
The hotel will be made up of 60% hotel rooms and 40% apartments, the latter of which will include both traditional 12-month leases and designer-furnished short-term rentals, according to a release from Sentral, the property’s management company.
The rooms will have interconnecting doors throughout each floor so that guests can book just one room or up to a six-bedroom penthouse, Ziade said. The AI algorithm will unlock or lock the interconnecting doors as needed to create the configuration guests asked for once they check in.
It will also retain information, so that if guests return even years later, their rooms are set to the same temperature, preferred language and more.
“So two years later you come — we have a better service than a five-star hotel,” he said. “Because they’re not going to remember who you are unless you spend millions of dollars. So that’s what we do.”
A mobile app that guests download to access their room will also allow the AI to understand their preferences, create a special guest experience for them and even make recommendations for events and activities they may enjoy. And, if one guest shares their virtual key with everyone else in their party, Ziade said, they each get their own individual profile.
A virtual assistant will track user preferences. So if you order coffee, your profile will retain how you take it, and if you order food with no onions, for example, that dislike will be noted.
After you make an order with the virtual assistant — whether for food or extra towels or anything else — staff prepare it and drop it outside your room into the “E-Butler,” a two-way cabinet by the main entrance to your unit. The system notifies you that your order is ready, and you grab it from the interior side of the E-Butler, Ziade said.
“So there is no knocking on your doors,” he said. “You don’t have to be in the room — you can be out by the pool, you can be sitting somewhere else in a meeting and remember you needed toothpaste. You just tell your virtual assistant, ‘I (need) toothpaste,’ and you go find it in your two-way cabinet.”
Similarly, he said, room cleaning is available upon request and by appointment. Just tell the virtual assistant you want the cleaning crew to come by 2 p.m., for instance, he said, and after they leave you can rate their performance.
Clients can also select certain “attributes” when they book, so they can pay for only what they want and not for amenities that they may never use, Ziade said.
Lisa Yeh, president of Sentral, said visitors to Las Vegas and elsewhere increasingly don’t want to waste time checking in, and want the ability to serve themselves.
“Our whole thesis, Sentral and Otonomus, is to provide convenience when the consumer is looking for it,” Yeh said. “It doesn’t mean that there’s nobody at the front desk … but we believe there’s a pretty significant segment of the demographic who are young-minded, that wants it to be technology driven.”
Otonomus is all about convenience, amenities and technology, she said, with meeting and conference rooms, Tesla V3 Superchargers and more. It will not have gaming offerings, she noted.
“You have the ability to self-serve yourself, rather than being in these really large casinos that are somewhat challenging to get in and out of these buildings,” Yeh said. “So I think there’s a segment of people that want to access all those activities, but then they also want more space, because our typical unit is going to be two to three times the size of a hotel room.”
Guests to the property will be able to enjoy an array of restaurants, from a Wahlburgers to a high-end Mexican concept, Ziade said. A private lounge on the rooftop will also give select guests a beautiful view of the Strip.
Orders from your room or even the pool will be serviced by restaurants at the party and third-party restaurants integrated into Otonomus’ technology, he added.
“I really don’t know how a hotel can tailor a guest experience without AI,” he said. “I mean, it’s almost impossible for humans to write down every single habit and … likes and dislikes of a client, and track them and create a tailored experience for the next day. It’s almost impossible.”
He likened the property to Uncommons, the mixed-use community in the southwest Las Vegas Valley, saying it will be reminiscent of Europe, with outdoor spaces in the front and back and a big courtyard overseeing the pool.
He wants locals to have somewhere to come where visitors “add that flair of vacation” to the space, and visitors to likewise “feel the local vibes,” Ziade said.
“The target is locals as well as guests,” he said. “So if you’re in the area, it’s going to be a beautiful place for locals to go in, and sit in the beautiful courtyard with the landscapes … It’s going to be a beautiful experience.”
He noted that another Otonomus property is being built simultaneously in Tulum, Mexico — with the same anticipated opening timeline — and there are even plans for one in Henderson. Though the latter will be a “world-class attraction,” Ziade said more details will not be revealed until the future.
Launching the Otonomus brand in Las Vegas makes sense not just because Ziade considers himself a native, he said, but also because if the concept can work competing with the hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms on the Strip — then it will work anywhere.
“What’s better than Las Vegas?” he said.
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