FU-TOURISM: service robots go live at the Palacio de Congresos de València

València, 10 August 2026 — Two service robots built by Deliverance Enterprises have completed a full season of everyday work at the Palacio de Congresos de València. The robots were installed through the city's Sandbox Urbano programme, run by the Ajuntament de València and Las Naves / València Innovation Capital, and the pilot was co-funded by the European Union under the FU-TOURISM Acceleration Programme.

One robot cleaned the vestibule and foyer on a fixed evening shift. The other carried trays in the cafeteria and at catered events, labelling each tray so that gluten-free, vegetarian and other allocations stayed identifiable at the moment of delivery. Both were supervised in real time from Deliverance's platform, which recorded every task and produced the reports the venue used to follow the work.

Between July 2025 and the end of January 2026 the two units covered roughly 3,000 m² of the 15,581 m² venue, completing about sixty cleaning shifts and supporting around twenty-five catered events and coffee breaks. Around twelve members of staff from the venue and from its catering and facility-services contractors — Gourmet Catering and Serveo — were trained to operate them day to day.

What a live venue taught us

The clearest lesson was that predictability matters more to operating teams than autonomy. The cleaning shift was fixed at 18:00 at the request of the venue and its cleaning contractor, who wanted a window their own staff could rely on and that would never collide with an event. In the cafeteria, the furniture is rearranged for every event format, so the serving robot's stopping points were re-anchored to markers on the floor rather than to the tables around them.

Deliverance also brought the platform's configuration screens forward in the plan, after the venue's teams asked to be able to make routine changes themselves rather than waiting on the supplier.

At the close of the pilot, the venue's management and both contractors reported that no major changes would be needed to continue, and considered the integration ready for regular service.

What happens next

The robots and the platform behind them are now part of Deliverance's commercial line, offered to hotels, congress and exhibition centres and the facility-services and catering operators that run their day-to-day services. They are provided as a service — rental and operation with a software subscription — rather than sold as equipment, which lowers the barrier for venue operators considering a first deployment.

Full detail of the project, its objectives and its results is published on the SMART-TOURISM 360 project page.