Hotel Staffed By Robots Set To Open In Japan This Summer

Huis Ten Bosch

The Dutch-themed Huis Ten Bosch theme park in Japan’s Nagasaki Prefecture is known for its annual display of lights and its myriad attractions, which include Duck Tours, canal cruises, horse and carriage rides, imperial gardens, something called a Ghost Story Hall, a Magic Mirror Maze and a Castle of the Dead. The park appears to run the gamut from Dutch-inspired tulip gardens complete with windmills to a Digital Horror House full of zombies and evil lab experiments. Now, however, Huis Ten Bosch will add to its distinctiveness with something even more terrifying: robotic hotel employees.

According to Japan’s National Tourism Organization, robots will provide “a wide range of services” at the new Henn-na Hotel, opening this summer in Huis Ten Bosch. These services include room cleaning, front desk and porter services. These human-looking robots will be multilingual, according to Engadget, and are capable of establishing eye contact and responding to body language.

Huis Ten Bosch

Huis Ten Bosch

These robots, or “actroids,” are a line of female androids manufactured by Kokoro, and are designed to be as realistically human as possible. According to Kokoro’s website, these actroids possess “overwhelming realism and ultimate functions of expression abilities.”

In addition to robot employees, the hotel will also use facial recognition technology instead of room keys.

The Henn-na, scheduled to open on July 17, will have 72 rooms. Another building of the same size is slated to open in 2016. Although the hotel will only have about 10 robot employees at first, Huis Ten Bosch company president Hideo Sawada said at a recent press conference that in the future, “we’d like to have more than 90 percent of hotel services operated by robots.”

If you’re interested in being a part of the robot hotel employee revolution, single rooms at the Henn-na will cost about $60 a night, while twin rooms will cost about $76.