Inside the world’s first robot hotel
At Japan’s Henn-na Hotel you are greeted by an animatronic dinosaur and your concierge is a vacuum cleaner lookalike. NEIL SQUIRES checks in
THERE is something distinctly odd about the Henn-na Hotel – that much is immediate from the start. Outside the entrance a 10ft-high Transformer robot glares menacingly at arriving guests like some oversized metal security guard. If that appears strange then things are about to become a whole lot stranger as you cross the threshold.
Through the sliding entrance door, past a fluffy dustbin twittering away in Japanese, lies the reception area. Three staff are waiting to check you in. They comprise two life-sized dinosaurs wearing bell-boy hats and one attractive “lady” in the middle wearing a smart white jacket and scarf. The trio are all automated.
Kibou, the velociraptor to the left, runs me through the checkin procedure. He is efficient and clear but it is disconcerting to be fixed by his beady eyes.
In the background music is playing from a piano in the lobby whose ivories are being tickled by a relative of R2-D2. It is all very peculiar. There isn’t a human to be seen.
The hotel in Sasebo, not far from Nagasaki on Kyushu island, is one of three in Japan staffed by robots. A fourth in Tokyo is under way. A robot revolution is coming: next year others will open in Shanghai and Taiwan with 100 planned over the next five years across Asia. The concept is novel, innovative and altogether weird.
The rooms, accessed by iris recognition rather than a key, are reached with assistance from automated trolleys which transport your cases. There are no light switches: sensors track your movements and put them on where and when they are needed.
The alternative is to activate your one-foot high bedside concierge – Chur-ri-chan – and ask her to do the honours, which she will willingly do remotely.
This is not artificial intelligence at work. She is not about to close down the life-support system and take over the hotel. But Chur-ri-chan, who speaks with an American accent and has an annoying habit of calling me “man”, can respond to a prescribed list of commands, setting wake-up calls and answering queries about the weather. She adds her own observations – the temperature is “comfortable” apparently – and rather needily asks if she did well afterwards.
The only problem is she does not always catch the guest’s prompts correctly but perhaps she isn’t used to northern vowels.
HER restricted conversational range means a human has to be found to answer wider questions about the implications of a hotel run by robots. Back in the lobby Allen Jongkeun Lee, an international sales executive with the hotel’s owners, materialises beside a giant mechanical arm which stores bags in lockers for guests.
Lee, who explains that the robot receptionists speak Chinese and Korean as well as English and Japanese, can also call upon assistance from robotic window cleaners and lawn mowers. He pulls out his iPad and plays a clip of the lobby’s mini robot orchestra playing Beethoven’s Ode To Joy.
He is proud of the technology and the benefits it has for his bottom line. “We used to have 30 staff but now we have only seven,” he says proudly. “We have 233 robots – 27 different types. It is very efficient. The staff costs are very low.”
A compact twin room in what, in other circumstances would be termed a budget hotel, starts from £70. Its name Henn has been translated from Japanese as “weird” but the owners, who also run the adjacent theme park, prefer the word “change” – as in pushing back the boundaries and moving beyond the ordinary. They have that covered all right.
The theme park is also surreal. Huis Ten Bosch is a mini-Holland transplanted literally brick by brick from Europe on a massive scale at a staggering cost of £1.7 billion.
It opened in 1992, went bankrupt almost immediately but has since been successfully revived and attracts three million customers annually.
INSIDE the park robots have taken over one of the restaurants. Pass Kevin, the lazy automated security guard slumped in his chair, and climb the stairs past Watson, the maitre d’ and there is Daneel mixing a cocktail dexterously at the bar. He is as much flesh and blood as a vacuum cleaner but can concoct up to 20 different drinks.
Next to him Andrew, the robotic head chef, is knocking up okonomiyaki – savoury pancakes – in the open kitchen. It requires no little skill. There are eggs to be broken, mixtures to be whisked and spatulas to be wielded but the stocky white figure with the blue visor pulls it all together – if a little clumsily.
At the same time Andrew is exchanging conversation with the automated ice-cream dispenser which is taking orders via an intercom.
All this is not merely a gimmick to attract customers – although as an exercise in making mealtimes interesting for children it works. It is part of a project backed by £150,000 of Japanese government money to decide which food processes need people and which can be moved on to machines.
There are 100 tables in the restaurant but only seven human staff. Their role is mainly to pre-prepare ingredients such as cabbage and provide back-up when pancake-flipping goes awry.
Of course the humans remain in ultimate charge – there is always the off button – but they are the back-up. In this gloriously crazy corner of Japan the machines are on the march.
For more info go to h-n-h.jp