Welcome to the Robot Hotel

Rude receptionists? Inefficient housekeeping? Japan has found a way to solve all these problems. The newly opened hotel in Nagasaki, Henn-na Hotel (literally, 'Strange Hotel'), is staffed entirely by robots.

At the reception desk, you'll find three efficient robots: one resembling a dinosaur, another designed as a woman, and a third that looks and is sized like a toy. Guests, the management assures, "can enjoy human-like and warm conversations with the robots while they work efficiently."

After completing the check-in process, special robots assist guests in transporting their luggage to their assigned rooms. Fitting for a hotel with such advanced technology, the rooms are unlocked not by keys, but through facial recognition technology.

The hotel also 'employs' a special information robot that helps guests plan city tours and recommends restaurants. Each hotel room includes a small, cute robot named Churi Robo to which guests can make requests, such as turning off the lights or checking the weather forecast.

"We aim to create the most efficient hotel in the world," brag the hotel owners, who are quick to add, however, that a human staff is also present 24 hours a day for emergencies requiring human intervention.

Room prices, by the way, start at $93 per night.

The hotel in Nagasaki may be the first in the world to employ robots so extensively, but it's not entirely unusual for Japan. The Japanese are renowned robot enthusiasts and have been employing humanoid robots as shopkeepers and museum guides for years—and now, as aforementioned, as hotel staff.

Photo: (Huisten Bosch)