Japan’s Henn na Hotel claims to offer weird check-in experience to customers with robot dinosaur staff that can not only gesticulate with their long arms but also utter little phrases.
Like a scene from Jurassic Park movie, the front desk is manned by robot dinosaurs, which are fitted with sensors that detect the movement of customers walking in through the entrance and accordingly greet “Welcome”.
These robots are equipped to process check-ins through a tablet system, which enables customers to opt one of the four languages to communicate – Japanese, English, Chinese or Korean.
Furthermore, every room is staffed with mini-robots with spherical Star Wars droid BB-8 shape, reported AFP.
These robots offer guests a range of services such as helping them to play music or change channels.
The lobby features a huge battery-operated fish swimming in an aquarium. This fish comes with electric lights that flicker on and off as they move.
Henn na Hotel, which means weird in the local language, first opened in Nagasaki in 2015, and the following year, it was certified by Guinness World Records as the first hotel in the world to have robots in its staff.
Currently, Henn na Hotel brand operates eight hotels across Japan that have robots in its staff, with most of them taking a humanoid shape.
Henn na Hotel Maihama Tokyo Bay manager Yukio Nagai was quoted by AFP as saying: “It’s becoming difficult to secure enough labour at hotels. To solve that problem, we have robots serving guests.”
Nagai further added that due to shortage in availability of labour, deploying robots has become a better option as these can handle everything – right from front desk duty to cleaning.
Human employees intervene only if there technical glitches. According to the hotel chain, online customer reviews indicate that such problems are not frequent at check-in.
