I came across an interesting article while browsing the news procrastinating writing about Lackawanna Coal Mine Tours. The title of the article from Foxnews was ” A Japanese hotel is going to swap robots for humans.” Considering that restaurants like McDonald’s, KFC, Panera, and Wendy’s have already been implementing robot employees, I wanted to learn more about robot hotels.
Robot Hotels
The Huis Ten Bosch amusement park which was first opened in 1992 and whose concept was to be an Eco-Friendly Future City, is where the first robot manned hotel was made. The goal of this place was to create a park that was energy & cost-efficient, environmentally friendly, and fun. When they decided to open up their hotel, they kept this all in mind and set a goal to create a hotel that was the ‘Ultimate in Efficiency’.
According to this article, Japan is trying to be the first to have a robot-only run hotel and has actually started this experiment in 2015 making it onto the Guinness Book of World Records. As you can imagine the perception of guests who stayed at one of these hotels varies greatly.
Based upon some of these reviews from one of their Tokyo locations, here are pros and cons that I got out of it:
Pros:
- Having a dinosaur greet you when you enter the hotel is fun and unique.
- The staff are very friendly and can speak 4 different languages fluently
- Robots in the lobby, are quiet until you need help.
- Futuristic vibe with the unique staff on hand.
- More cost-efficient for the hotel chain.
Cons:
- Robots don’t always work. Have some human staff on hand to fix issues.
- Have to check in using a kiosk which is a pain and not very user-friendly.
- No human staff to ask about tours and information about near attractions.
- “Smart speaker in the room not very smart”
- Looks like a ‘love hotel’ at first glance.
- Bianca from Spain left this review on Booking.com “The robot in the room doesn’t work properly nor does it do much. It’s difficult to get anyone to help out of check-in hours- we got there at 12:00 and there was no one to help out our luggage in the hold- it was terrible having to wait 3 hours for the reception to open- there are really no restaurants around. They don’t clean unless you ask for it at an extra charge. They do change towels daily.”
- Lastly, one of the more amusing ones on the Foxnews article was about this guest that kept getting woken up by a robot every couple of hours saying,” Sorry, I couldn’t catch that. Could you repeat your request?”
Lol, turns out that this robot was responding to the guests snoring! Here is the Youtube clip on the article just to give you an idea of what it is like.
If you are interested in trying to experience this, then the next time you go to Japan I recommend that you look for a Henn Ha Hotel.
Would YOU stay at one of these places? Please share your thoughts with us. We would love to hear from you! Here is a link to one in Tokyo if you are curious to see more.
