“I don’t know, but ask the robot. It’s programmed to be happy to help you,” is a phrase that might still be considered to belong to the future.
It doesn’t. It belongs to Japan, which will in July feature a hotel fully staffed by robots.
The robots are coming this summer to The Netherlands-themed Huis Ten Bosch theme park just south of Nagasaki, Japan.
It will be the Henn-na Hotel.
One of the advantages of working in London surrounded by colleagues from Hotel News Now’s sister company STR Global is that it seems like every language on Earth is spoken here. One of the team, Grace Henebry, lived in Japan and speaks Japanese. From her I learned Henn-na means either “flower” or “it’s weird” in Japanese. PC World magazine translates it as “strange hotel.”
I have no doubt that in the context of this new product, the latter is the intended meaning, although for many nowadays, there’ll be nothing odd in the concept of being greeted by androids while clutching Androids.
Will this hotel be a regular fixture on the tourism circuit (board)? I am not so sure. There are times I like to be left on my own. I certainly do not like being fussed over, which for some is the entire point of a hotel.
Now I am older, I do not fall into the trap of discerning between tourists and travelers, but I am at heart a social animal. I want to see different cultures, talk to people who are different from me to see these differences and also the similarities. That will not happen with a robot—at least in my lifetime.
Plus the questions I always ask when I am in a hotel might not be the same ones programmed into the robots by their controllers. I want to know what time sunrise is, so I can be out of hotel investigating as soon as it is light; I want to know what is quirky and off the beaten path; I want to know where I might pick up a map that is detailed, not one overly simplified by tourism offices that just shows where the shops are.
I rather fear the questions I would ask—and add your questions, too, which I no doubt spin off in other directions—and I rather fear our robot friends might blow a fuse. And if science fiction is anything to go by, that might cause near world destruction and a quick phone call to Will Smith.
It might all be a little too weird.
Maybe “henn-na” does not sound so negative before translated from the Japanese. Maybe it means to Japanese ears as, “Wow, how wonderfully quirky but at the same time massively appealing”?
Hoteliers might not consider it strange at all when they start seeing the revenue per available room numbers come in. Labor costs—usually the No. 1 operating expenditure—could be limited to renewing batteries or circuit boards. Think about it: This could be a good idea that was programmed to come. The robot doesn’t need time off. And average daily rate at the hotel, according to PC World, begin at 7,000 Japanese yen ($60). Throw some dynamic pricing on top of that as availability diminishes, and the robots’ human masters could be sitting pretty.
Rates will be considerably lower than those at Huis Ten Bosch’s three other, more traditional hotels, which includes the Hotel Europe, modeled on Amsterdam’s Hotel De L’Europe.
The Hoshi Ryokan hot-spring hotel in Awazu, Japan, meanwhile, commands considerably higher ADR, which might not be a surprise considering it was opened 14 centuries ago and so probably has some experience to fall back on.
I stayed three years ago at this hotel, which is squabbling with another Japanese hotel, Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, near Hayakawa, as to which is the world’s oldest.
For many, Hoshi could well be hospitality personified. Upon being escorted to beautiful, sparsely decorated tatami mat-strewn rooms, green tea is ceremonially prepared before the guests change into a yukata gown for the rest of their waking hours. Recreation is a visit to the hot springs that remain pristine despite probably having had more than their share of naked samurai warriors, and dinner is sushi and sublime.
There likely is not a chance of the span of 46 continuous generations of the same family who has run this noble retreat deciding to replace themselves with Holly Hoteltron or Ro-bert Resortrix and their friends.
But the chance to experience both appeals to my inner vacation planner, although the robots only for a one-night stay. I would be thoroughly interested, though, in being the first to wake up and to see what state the robots are in first thing in the morning. Maybe they would sense movement and whirr into action?
The robots at Henn-na (there will be three behind reception and several others dotted around) will speak any language programmed into them.
At first glance, the photo of the robo-receptionists (see above) reminded me of ground-breaking German electronic musicians Kraftwerk, whose releases included 1978’s “The Robots.” Its band members often programmed their synthesizers at concerts, replaced themselves on stage with automatons and then retired to watch from the front row.
Plans are also afoot for the Henn-na idea to be spun into a brand, but not a band, while I look forward immensely to the first hotel investment conference in which every panel speaker is robotic.
It will come. I’ve programmed it for 2017.
Email Terence Baker or find him on Twitter.
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