Perfect service? Yes in a Japanese hotel run by robots

The Henn na Hotel in Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan has come up with the perfect solution to beat labour costs and keep room rates low - replace most of its staff with robots.

Check-in and check-out services as well as porter and concierge services are all provided by robots to save costs in the hotel which is part of an amusement park, Huis Ten Bosch.

Guests to the hotel will be greeted by two receptionists. A female humanoid with blinking lashes speaks Japanese while foreigners have the pleasure of being served by a "vicious-looking dinosaur" which speaks English.

"If you want to check in, push one," the dinosaur says, according to AP.

A statement from the hotel says that its 72 rooms will be opened on 17 July. The hotel was designed by Kawazoe Lab, the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo and the Kajima Corporation.

The hotel, which is named "Strange Hotel" in English, promises guests that they can "enjoy conversations with robots with a humanly kind of warmth".

Guests do not need keys to get into their rooms. The face authentication system will register guests through image recognition and let them into their rooms, thereby "liberating you from the hassle of carrying keys and the anxiety of losing it."

However guests who do not wish to go through face recognition, can use a contactless IC card key, the hotel says.

Room facilities can be operated using a tablet, eliminating the need to "move around the room", the statement adds. There are no switches on the wall in the rooms.

Using robots not a gimmick

Hideo Sawada, who runs the hotel, said using the robots was not a gimmick but a serious effort to use technology and to be efficient. The hotel opened its doors to journalists on Wednesday, with robot demonstrations, ahead of its opening on Friday.

The only service still under human control is security. Security cameras are monitored by real humans to ensure guests are safe and to ensure "no one makes off with one of the expensive robots," AP notes.

Sawada says he hopes to open another robot-operated hotel in Japan soon and later overseas. He is also keen to add more languages such as Chinese and Korean to the robots' vocabulary.

He said the hotel will only be half-full for the first few weeks on opening to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Sawada told reporters one of the aim of setting up a robot-run hotel was to keep prices low. A night at Henn na Hotel costs ¥9,000 (£46.52, €66.5, $72), considered low in Japan where a one-night stay can easily cost two or three times more.