Hotels should ditch the Terminator wake-up machine and go back to humans

Does anyone else hate the idea of a computer waking them up in the morning when they’re staying at a hotel?

I for one, can’t stand when I’m asked to type in my wake-up time using military time in the evening, or when a radio station or computer voice wakes me up in the morning.

Humans instinctively don’t trust technology, which is best reflected in movies like Terminator and 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is because a human knows if they screw up, they get fired. When a computer screws up, they get defragmented.

Personally, I want that fear instilled in whoever is responsible for my wake-up.

I’ve stayed in my fair share of hotels over the last few years, from hostels to five-star joints in Europe. Of all these hotels, there has been one wake-up call that has been superior to any other: It’s the American Club in Kohler, home to Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run. But their wake-up call stuck with me for a few reasons:

First, when you call in the evening, you give your time to a human, you aren’t asked to plug in numbers into the phone using four-digit, 24-hour time. In the morning, a human, not a radio station or computer, calls you and gives the weather for the day (which is the first thing on every golfer’s mind when they wake up - that or “Where’s the Advil?"). The operator also asks to call back in 15 minutes, so no need to hit the snooze.

They also reminded me what time my tee time was at the resort and filled me in on how their shuttle system to the courses work. If I wanted to request a female voice with a Swedish accent, I feel like they probably would have made it happen for me.

I know some bigger hotels, like those thousand-plus rooms on the Vegas Strip probably can’t afford to chit chat with every wake-up call on a weekend morning, but if I was running a moderately-sized hotel, I would make it a mandatory service for each of my guests. It seems like a very cheap and easy way to put the “wow” factor in effect.

When I’m trying to enter in my wake-up time to a touchtone key pad, I feel like I’m on the phone with my credit card company, and what hotel wants their guests to have that feeling?

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