Cutting Edge, First-of-Its-Kind Aloft Hotel Opens In Dublin

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DUBLIN, CA — Imagine staying in a hotel room where if you ask for more towels, they're delivered by a service robot. Or if you want to adjust the room's temperature, all you have to do is say so, and the room does what you want.

Well, as it turns out, such a scenario isn't years away, or even months. It's happening right now, at this moment, and it's taking place in the Tri-Valley city of Dublin.

For nearly two months now, guests staying at the Aloft Hotel in the city have been able to partake in technological luxuries available at no other hotel in the chain, which has 100-plus locations across the globe.

The cutting-edge 127-room hotel, which cost upwards of $25 million to build, is the latest by Zenique Hotels the location's owner, operator and developer. Zenique Hotels President Rupesh Patel said that the Dublin hotel's features make it unique.

"The technology that we have in our (Dublin) Aloft is not the typical Aloft standard; we kind of went above and beyond," he said. In addition to towels, the delivery robot can can also bring food and amenities to guest rooms.

"It can pretty much deliver anything," Patel said in an exclusive interview with Patch. "It can go up and down elevators, it can call the room to let the guest know that the robot's at the room waiting to make it's delivery. Kids and adults all love it."

But although the robots are state-of-the-art, there are actually about a dozen other Aloft hotels that have them. What makes the Dublin Aloft unique are two things that come standard in every one of it's rooms. One is a virtual assistant in the form of an Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker that's capable of controlling the room's heating, venting and air conditioning system.

All the guest has to do is speak to the device to "wake" it, then issue a command.

The other unique thing to the Dublin Aloft is computer tablets which guests can use to communicate with hotel staff, make requests and report issues, among other things.

As far as how the hotel manages to allow its patrons the ability of such high data usage without having devices crash or being slowed down during periods of heavy use, Patel said that the hotel has fiber cables that it uses for super-high speed internet, as opposed to the standard broadband speed.

The cost isn't cheap at an average of between $250 and $300 per night, but some may find the convenience worth it. As for how the hotel came to be built in Dublin, Patel said it was several years in the making.

"We were actually looking at developing a hotel there (in Dublin) since 2008, and then in 2009, when the economy changed, we kind of backed off," he said. But in 2014, after the Great Recession had passed, the company started exploring the idea again, in large part because of the city's location.

"It's kind of that overflow city where a lot of residents are moving out of the Bay Area and into Dublin," Patel said. "We thought it was an opportunistic market where more businesses are going to start moving there in order to cater to where the talent lives."

The Aloft is the first hotel built in the city in well over a decade, something that Patel said was due to the high cost of doing business in the Tri-Valley. The business employs 30 people.

"I don't think it was so much about the city not approving hotels, I think developers were just not proposing anything," he said. "I think developers had sticker shock because developing in Dublin is not cheap," he said. "Compared to other cities, Dublin is an expensive market to develop."

But although Zenique Hotels was ahead of the curve, the competition may be about to heat up.

"Now throughout the Tri-Valley, there are some proposed other hotels that are likely to come in," Patel said. "So I think we were just on the forefront of the movement."

Among those pleased with Zenique Hotels' entry into the market is Dublin Mayor David Haubert.

“The Aloft hotel is the first new hotel in the Tri-Valley in the past 14 years," he told Patch. "It is a welcome addition to our community, and we are proud to have them."

Aloft is located at 4075 Grafton St. in Dublin.

This story was made possible by the support of Dublin Patch members. Want to support more local coverage of Dublin? Click here to learn more.

Photos courtesy Zenique Hotels