Hotels in Japan Run by Robots

Robots-staffed hotels with facial recognition feature

The facial recognition system records an image of each guest's face, allowing for keyless locking and unlocking of guest rooms. The hotels also provide key cards on request, so it is possible to stay without using facial recognition.

Each hotel room is equipped with a room concierge robot looking like a dinosaur egg named Tapia. Tapia is like a cute version of Alexa. It can give you information on weather, chose a song based on the music you are humming. Robot Tapia control lights, temperature in the room and set wake-up calls.

The Henn na Hotel in Sasebo, Nagasaki has been recognized by Guinness World Records as “the first robot-staffed hotel” in the world.

Hideo Sawada, president of the theme park owned by travel agency H.I.S. Co., said at a news conference in Tokyo at the grand opening,“Our hotel will keep on moving with the evolution of robots and artificial intelligence, aiming to entertain our guests better and make them happy”.

Despite the hype of the all robot-staffed hotels, there are still rooms for improvement. Here are a few lacking services guests should be aware of:

Don’t expect daily bed making service unless you stay long than 6 nights or pay a nominal fee for the service.

Another thing missing from the service is in-room dining service. Those robots won’t bring you breakfast to your room door.

Robotic staff can be exciting at first. But the human touch is irreplaceable. The kids might have a blast ordering these robots around. It is definitely an experience we’d like to have at least once in our lifetime.