Japan’s craze for theme hotels and its forays into robotic attendants have achieved a weird mashup at Tokyo’s Henn na Hotel, with robotic dinosaurs greeting visitors at the front desk and checking them in.
‘Weird’ is not too strong a word, apparently, because that’s what the hotel’s name means. But some guests find it a bit too weird, even though the Jurassic creatures in bellboy hats can help them in English, Japanese, Korean or Chinese. The manager told AFP “We haven’t quite figured out when exactly the guests want to be served by people, and when it’s okay to be served by robots.”
The robot fantasy doesn’t stop at the front desk, though the dinosaurs do. Each guest room is equipped with a small round robot based on BB-8 from the Star Wars films that can help with a variety of tasks, including sorting out TV and audio systems.
