How to cover a hotel front desk at night

A hotel can cover the night desk with its own night auditor, an agency worker, a remote agent on a lobby screen, a kiosk or a robot. A desk clerk on staff earns a median of $16.86 an hour, a delivery robot leases for about $3 an hour, and Starlife Bella costs $10 to $20 an hour with its robot pilot included.

No single option does every night task, so most hotels combine two. Hotels are also looking around because staff are hard to find. In a survey of 246 hoteliers that the American Hotel and Lodging Association ran in late February 2026, more than half said their property was somewhat or severely understaffed, although 70% were offering higher wages. In an earlier survey with Hireology, 71% had openings they could not fill, and front desk roles were the second most mentioned shortage at 26%.

What the night desk has to do

The night desk has four jobs. Late check-in is the one most people think of, and it means the booking, the ID check, the payment and the key. Guests also bring questions to the desk, and they expect somebody to be present who will notice a problem and call for help. The fourth job is the night audit itself, where the hotel closes the day's accounts and posts room charges.

Before you compare options, ask your brand and your insurer whether a person must be on the property overnight.

The options

A night auditor on staff

One trained person does all four jobs. O*NET, using 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, puts the pay of hotel, motel and resort desk clerks at $16.86 an hour at the median. That figure is for all desk clerks, whatever shift they work. Eight hours on each of 365 nights is 2,920 hours, or about $49,000 a year in wages at the median, before payroll taxes, benefits and cover for sick days.

A hotel staffing agency

An agency sends a temporary worker and bills you by the hour, at a rate that includes a markup on the wage. Instawork, a staffing marketplace, says typical markups are 25% to 50% for W2 employees. Hospitality Staffing Solutions is one agency that works only with hotels and venues, and it gives its rates by quote. An agency suits a gap of a few weeks.

A remote or virtual front desk

A remote agent appears on a screen in the lobby and checks guests in from a call center. Aavgo says its agents work by video and phone from call centers in India and the Philippines, and that its kiosk takes payment and gives out the key card. Its pricing page says the kiosk comes at no charge and the hotel pays an hourly rate for the hours covered, but it does not publish the rate. Roommatik sells remote reception for the time blocks you choose, such as nights, for a fixed monthly fee that it also does not publish.

This works if check-in is your main night task. Nobody is in the lobby, though, so plan who comes when a guest needs help in person.

Self check-in kiosks and mobile keys

A kiosk checks ID, takes payment and prints a key card, and a mobile key puts the key on the guest's phone. The Virdee kiosk, for example, verifies identity with a photo and a document scan and prints key cards, and Virdee prices it by quote. A kiosk handles a routine check-in well, but it does not answer an unusual question.

Delivery robots

A delivery robot carries towels, toiletries and food from the desk to the room. Relay Robotics says its robots call and ride the elevator and deliver at any hour without staff help. Choose one if your night clerk leaves the desk empty for every delivery. Starlife Bella does not carry items, so it cannot do this job.

A robot with a person behind it

Starlife Bella is a humanoid service robot that greets guests and talks with them, while a robot pilot controls it live. What it does at night is set out further down.

The options side by side

Prices checked in November 2026. They change often; check the linked pages.

How much does a hotel robot cost?

Relay Robotics asks buyers to request a quote, but its case study for Hôtel Monville in Montreal lists a lease cost of $3 an hour. RobotLAB, a US reseller, lists the Pudu FlashBot Max, a hotel delivery robot for several floors, from $20,000 or $559 a month, and the Keenon W3 from $29,600 or $829 a month, both on 36-month terms.

Starlife Bella costs $10 to $20 an hour. There is nothing to buy because you pay by the hour, and the price includes the robot pilot, the driving and the maintenance. A full year of 8-hour nights is 2,920 hours, which comes to $29,200 to $58,400. See pricing.

What Starlife Bella does at night, and what it does not

Bella has a friendly face and a chest display, and it moves on a wheeled base. At night it welcomes late arrivals, answers their questions in their own language and shows them the way to the elevator, the kiosk or the breakfast room. It speaks more than 30 languages with live translation both ways.

Bella is not autonomous. A trained robot pilot, whom Starlife supplies, controls it live from a laptop with AI assistance. If a guest needs a person on site, the robot pilot tells the staff member you name.

Bella does not hand over keys, take payment or run the night audit, so those steps stay with your own systems and staff. It also does not carry items to rooms, and it is not a security device.

It runs a full 8-hour shift on one charge. Bella works in hotels today, but the results Starlife has published so far come from a mall and from healthcare settings, so a 14-day pilot is the normal way to test it at your desk. More is on the hotels page.

Which option fits which hotel

Keep a night auditor if the shift is mostly audit work and you can hire for it. A kiosk with a remote agent is built for check-in, so choose that if check-in is the problem. Add Bella next to the kiosk when guests arrive late and speak many languages, and lease a delivery robot when the night clerk spends the shift taking towels upstairs.

Tell us how your night desk runs today and we will show you how Bella would welcome your late arrivals. Book a demo.