Alisa Walsh Made Very High Tech Friends at The Sheraton Los Angeles San Gabriel

Alisa Walsh recently had the pleasure of touring a very exciting addition to local hotel and event space offerings, the Sheraton Los Angeles San Gabriel.

The 288-room Sheraton opened a little earlier this year and it has already achieved a peak occupancy rate of 85% as well as nationwide media attention due to the most modern staffers;
8 TUG robots.
The Sheraton L.A. San Gabriel is currently the only U.S. hotel to feature these high tech "staffers".
The hotel also offers a lot of extra features to accommodate Asian visitors' specific wishes and needs. We are happy to share more details.

Above: the Sheraton Los Angeles San Gabriel.

A lot of expansion is underway in the City of San Gabriel, just East of Downtown Los Angeles, and a hub for Asian communities. The Valley Boulevard Specific Plan, an urban redevelopment project for this thoroughfare, was launched in December 2006. Nearly 12 years later the area is booming. 
The new Sheraton is a cornerstone of this exciting development.

EW spoke to Debbie Vail, Senior Sales Manager.

"Debbie, what specifically has your property undertaken to accommodate Chinese guests?"

Debbie Vail: 
"We feature signage throughout the building in Mandarin as well as English so our Chinese guests can easily make their way around. We also added certain amenities for the guest rooms that are important to our guests. Every room offers slippers and a tea kettle. The signage in the rooms is also bi-lingual. All written information such as brochures and pamphlets is in English and Mandarin. We have Mandarin speaking staff in all of our departments. Furthermore we accept Ali Pay and we use We-Chat, the most popular communications and social media app in China."


One special feature generated international headlines: innovative and very advanced robots, four different robots who assist guests and staff in a variety of tasks.

Debbie Vail:
"Gabriel, our Wayfinder robot, is always stationed on the lobby floor and he can usually be found at the entrance. He is equipped with an iPad where guests can ask for directions to any location on the lobby floor. Gabriel understands English and Mandarin. he then guides the guests to the requested destination, like Starbucks or a restaurant or a ballroom. Once he gets there he opens the door and says "You have arrived". He then returns to the front lobby by himself to be available for the next guest.
We have two luggage robots. One is named after Rich DeMuro who visited our hotel."


Our Los Angeles local KTLA Channel 5 TV's Tech Guru Rich DeMuro did a great job demonstrating the different types of service robots: here the Wayfinder, the room service delivery robot and the secure luggage delivery robot.

Debbie: "Our luggage robots can be loaded with heavy luggage. They take the service elevator to deliver the luggage straight to the room. Once the luggage robot arrives at the door, he sends a signal to the in-room phone to let guests know that their luggage is delivered. The guest also receive a pin code to unlock the robot to retrieve the luggage. So en route the luggage is secure and cannot be taken by anyone else. The bellman is available to guide the guests to the their room and assist in getting them installed comfortably. Furthermore we have a room service delivery robot that works overnight to deliver food and beverage orders to the rooms. Our human staff gets a break. Last but not least we have a robot that can pick up linen and works in housekeeping to assist the housekeeping ladies. He does all the heavy lifting for them."

One group of guests in particular is delighted.
Debbie: "We have a lot of families staying with us. The kids really light up when they see the robots. We had robots deliver milk and cookies. The kids love that service."

The hotel features two high end, family friendly restaurants, EST. Prime Steakhouse and Opal, an upscale Cantonese restaurant on site. Both eateries are open for dinner. Opal just opened its doors in late July.
The hotel serves an international breakfast that features American choices as well as Dim Sum and other Chinese choices from Opal's kitchen in the Crystal Ballroom.

Debbie Vail can be reached by email.

We are very happy about the increasing great possibilities for our Chinese clients. #ChinaReady is a growing community of Los Angeles area based providers and we are proud to be a part of the community.

Thank you for reading.