Robotic massages have arrived at luxury hotels. Should you try?
At my most recent massage I reached no such moment. For one thing, the therapist never got to my hands. For another, it was a robot.
Getting a massage from a robot, it turns out, is more fun than relaxing—at least at first—and it’s a little more practical than pampering. But if the whole thing sounds like science fiction, it’s not: The 30-minute service is now bookable for $75 at the Lotte New York Palace hotel, the first hospitality partner for automated wellness brand Aescape.
Aescape is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Eric Litman, whose foray into robotics has been roughly seven years in the making. He tells Bloomberg that he’ll ship 200 massage robots to hotels and gyms by the end of the year—including at least 10 Equinox locations—with a plan to further ramp up production in 2025.
His vision: To disrupt a slice of the global wellness industry, valued at $5.6 trillion in November 2023, with on-demand services and automation. “We are the first commercial example that we know of where robots are directly coming in contact with human bodies, in a fully autonomous way,” Litman says. He likens the experience to riding in a self-driving car. “You get in one for the first time, and you might be a little bit trepidatious watching the steering wheel move by itself,” he says. “But then you realize it’s just like a steady, safe driver. After your second or third time you just sort of forget it’s a self-driving vehicle.”
The robotic massage experience
Aescape’s robotic masseur looks a bit like a surgical robot, with white armatures that wrap around a navy blue massage table. Hovering above it in a silver metal frame are two cylinders with tiny spotlights and body-scanning sensors. The setup at the Lotte New York
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