Humans take a back seat, robots take over at Hen Na Hotel

By on August 7, 2015

 

At the entryway, hotel guests are greeted by a bowing robot and over at the reception desk are a Japanese-speaking female humanoid with lashes that blink and a savage-looking dinosaur that speaks Japanese and English. The aptly named Henn na (quirky) hotel opened on July 17 inside the Huis Ten Bosch, a popular amusement park in Sasebo, Nagasaki, that houses the Hollanda mura (Holland Village).

Hotel guests are not given room keys. Instead, it uses facial recognition technology by registering the digital image of the guest’s face during check-in. “Robots are not good at finding keys, if people happen to lose them,” explains Hideo Sawada who operates the hotel. If guests want to deposit some items or personal belongings for safekeeping, a giant robotic arm will take and lift one of the immaculate white boxes stacked into the wall inside the cloak room and put it out through an open glass space for the guest to use.

Sawada, in a press brief, demonstrated a drone that delivers snack jars. “Staffing the hotel with robots is no marketing gimmickry but an effort to highlight innovation and cut costs,” says Sawada. Accommodation at Henn na Hotel starts at 9,000 yen which is about three times cheaper than standard hotel rates in Japan. There is no light switch inside the rooms but a lamp-size talking robot located on top of the night table called “Tuly” will do it for you. Tuly can also answer simple questions that Siri does,  like “What’s the weather today?”

 

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