Inside Japan’s first robot-staffed hotel

Henn-na, said to be the world’s first hotel run by robots, turns out to need a surprising amount of human intervention – except where you would most like it

News of the world’s first hotel staffed by robots, which opened last month near Nagasaki, Japan (where else?), immediately went viral, but few of the reports actually involved a visit. I went along last week to see if Henn-na hotel lived up to the hype.

I arrive at 2.55pm. All is quiet. Behind reception is a motionless but lifelike girl robot wearing a cream jacket and a smirk. She has a sign saying “only Japanese”, so I approach another robot, this one designed, bizarrely, to look like a velociraptor and sporting a bow tie and a bellhop hat. I say hello. Nothing. I wave and he stares past me, his arms outstretched but unmoving.

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via Inside Japan’s first robot-staffed hotel