JapanTravel and aviation2015–2019Henn na Hotel (H.I.S. group)
Robot-staffed hotel
A hotel run mostly by robots retired about half of them after guests and staff found they created more work
Problem
Japanese hotels face a shortage of workers. The H.I.S. group, through its Huis Ten Bosch theme park company, set out to build a low-cost hotel that needed as few people as possible.
Approach
Henn na Hotel opened in July 2015 near Nagasaki with robot receptionists (including dinosaur-shaped ones), a robot concierge, luggage robots and an in-room voice assistant. The company said robots handled about 90% of the work after the first year, and it opened further hotels in the chain. From early 2019 it removed about half of its robots and gave reception, concierge and luggage work back to people.
Results
Takeaway
The company reported fewer staff and faster check-in in the first year. Three years later, robots still could not copy passports, answer simple questions or reach most rooms, leaving staff to keep them running and handle routine exceptions, which led to the rollback.
Categories
- Size
- Large enterprise
- Industry
- Travel and aviation
- Business function
- Customer serviceProduction and quality
- Innovation type
- Business model innovationProcess innovation
- AI technology
- Robotics and automationConversational and voice AI
- Adoption
- Vendor solution
- Evidence
- Press reporting
Sources
Source summaries
The trade outlet reports on the hotel's first-anniversary press conference. The company said robots rose from 82 to 182 and human staff fell from 30 to 10 while rooms doubled to 144, with robots doing about 90% of the work. It also cited check-in cut to about 40 seconds and a summer occupancy close to 100%.
Citing the Wall Street Journal, Inquirer.net reported that the hotel was retiring about half of its nearly 250 robots. It lists failures, including an in-room assistant that could not answer simple questions, reception robots that needed staff to copy passports, and luggage robots that reached only 24 of 100 rooms. It quotes the owner saying robots were not needed in some places or annoyed people.
Matador Network reported that the hotel opened in 2015 with 243 robots and was culling about half after they malfunctioned or became outdated. It recounts a guest whose snoring repeatedly set off the in-room assistant and notes that staff had to keep the robots working. Receptionists, a concierge and a bellhop were human again.
Full details are in the original sources.
