If you’re the kind of hotel guest who wants room service but finds picking up the phone and speaking to an actual human too much, the Aloft Manhattan Downtown hotel may have the answer. It has just launched Text it, Get it (called TiGi for short), a service that allows you to request services simply by sending an emoji.

Guests are presented with a menu of “packages”, which they can request by texting the corresponding emoji combination to hotel staff. “The hangover”, for instance, consists of two bottles of water, painkillers and two bananas (why they haven’t used the egg emoji is anyone’s guess - perhaps American hangovers are somehow more tolerable), while “the munchies” will bring junk food to your door. It’s not a new idea – Brooklyn bar Sunken Harbor Club launched an all emoji menu in January this year. In London, food delivery service BurgerBurger allows you to order gourmet burgers via emoji, as does pizza chain Dominos, while drinks company Innocent ran a pop-up at Shoreditch Boxpark in London over the summer that allowed customers to order “coconut-based mocktails” by using a special emoji combination. Aloft, however, appears to be the first hotel group to adopt the idea.

The emoji room service menu Photograph: PR

Whether you see emoji room service as further evidence of the emoji’s increasing tyrannical worldwide dominance at the tragic expense of the written word, as the apex of laziness, or simply as a gimmick, the idea will no doubt spread to other companies. How long before we reach “peak emoji”?

The hotel group is considering expanding emoji room service to its hotels in Europe, Asia and the rest of the US. Just be careful when attempting to order an aubergine.