Japan has opened the doors to the world’s first automated, robot-staffed hotel, replacing people with pretty, lifelike lady humanoid receptionists and a bow tie-wearing, dinosaur concierge.
At the Henn-na Hotel, or ‘Strange Hotel,’ guests check in, check out, get their rooms cleaned and their luggage conveyed by a fleet of blinking, beeping and rolling robots that the hotel describes as “warm and friendly.”
Likewise, as part of their aim to feature cutting-edge technology, stays are keyless. Instead, guests enter their rooms via facial recognition technology.
Aside from its novelty factor, the use of robots and the emphasis on automated services is part of a bigger concept: To reduce labor costs, save energy, reduce waste, and develop a self-sufficient hotel powered by solar energy and machines.
For example, rooms are conspicuously absent of refrigerators, lights are motion-sensored, and rooms are cooled using an energy-efficient radiant panel air conditioning system.
The hotel is part of the Dutch theme park Huis Ten Bosch in Sasebo, Nagasaki, and may be expanded across Japan and abroad, said company president Hideo Sawada.
Future plans also include the addition of Chinese and Korean languages to the robots’ repertoire.
Other features include a porter robot, that will transport luggage to guest rooms, and a self-serve cafe which serves snacks and drinks from, what else, a vending machine.
It’s not just Japan that’s replaced humans with robots in hotels. Over in California, not far from Apple’s corporate campus, Aloft Hotels put what they called the world’s first robotic butler at the front desk last year. Botlr is used to shuttle amenities to guest rooms and acknowledges requests with peppy beeps and flashing lights.
Meanwhile, though the industry may be moving increasingly towards automated hotel services, the results of a recent JD Power survey that polled 62,000 guests in the US and Canada suggest that there’s still value in old-fashioned human contact: When staff greeted guests with a simple smile “all the time,” the average number of problems reported fell by 50 percent.
Room rates at the Strange Hotel, which features 144 rooms, start at 9,000 JPY ($73 USD) for a single room.
http://news.yahoo.com/japan-opens-doors-worlds-first-hotel-run-entirely-105904952.html
Creepy for sure. Even now they took a survey what percentage of men would have sex with a robot 20percent said they would.
WTF
NEXT WE ARE GOING TO HEAR THE F”@&in CARTEL IS USING ROBOTS TO MANUFACTURE COCAINE FOR F@&K SAKES!!!!!!!!!
This will deprive rich people of the arrogance enhancing ego inflation they receive from looking down their noses at bellboys and maids, so they’ll avoid the place.
Casinos that cater to only rich people fail for the same reason. If there’s no one but rich people there, there’s no one to impress, or deride, and it takes all the fun out of it for them.
A lot of people will visit these hotels once for the novelty, but the robot maids will bore them after a visit or two, and they’ll choose hotels that let them look down their noses at working people.
Can’t rape a robot. No satisfaction in it. The rich would only need to invest their wealth into such a thing and that would satisfy their lust. But theirs is one of inflicting something on other humans, not the act itself. And THAT, is the definition of sociopathic behavior. All the money in the world can not fix their parasitic need to feed on mankind’s suffering. Rape has many forms and manifestations. The worst of the worst and has absolutely no limits on what it will do to even temporarily fulfill its desires. imho.
That’s Japan for ya. Their whole island is in cutsy anime LA LA Land.
Next thing you know, Johnny Cab will be trying to run you over.
“We hope you enjoyed the ride!” – Johnny Cab, Total Recall