A new hotel opens today in the Huis Ten Bosch amusement park in Nagasaki that will be staffed by animatronic robots. The name of the hotel is "Henn-na Hotel" (変なホテル) which translates as "Strange Hotel". The choice of robots as staff shows that they take being strange quite seriously. The hotel is touted as a "low-cost hotel" because they are apparently saving on labour costs. This seems unlikely as there are already plenty of hotels in Japan with automated check-in machines so this is more likely part of the PR. The announced prices aren't quite business hotel cheap, but they're a little lower than the prices charged by international chain hotels in the major cities. The price of a single will range from 9,000 to 16,000 yen, a twin will cost between 13,000 to 20,000 yen and a triple will cost between 20,000 yen and 26,000 yen. The reason there is a range is because guests will need to bid on rooms when they reserve them. The bidding will begin at the lower price. While those prices are hardly budget friendly, if you consider that you're basically paying to stay at a robot theme park within a Dutch village theme park in Japan, you can probably justify the expense. Inside the hotel there are 2 robots at the front desk (including an animatronic velociraptor), 1 to 2 service robots (we guess they need to take breaks), 2 porter robots, 1 locker robot and a few cleaning robots. Hopefully they've taught the robots to speak fluent English as Huis Ten Bosch could use some help with their English-language publicity material. Also, at the moment, booking in English is only available by email—at the top end of the price scale. Presumably the robots are still working on their English website.
The ultimate guide to Japan travel
The ultimate guide to Japan travel
The ultimate guide to Japan travel