Recently, Manu en Germany, a vlogger with more than 46,000 followers on the social network TikTok, attracted attention when posting a video about the Henn na Hotel in Tokyo (Japan).
In the video, she recounted her experience of receiving and returning her room at a hotel completely staffed by robots. The post attracted public attention with nearly 900,000 views.
The hotel always promotes self-service services with high technology. However, the female tourist had a not-so-happy experience with this service.
She said the atmosphere was like in the British horror series Black Mirror and described the robots as very "strange and mysterious".
In the video, she said she saw some robots posing as people lining up behind the check-in counter, wearing neat uniforms with a small round hat.
"Don't look at me, don't look at me like that," the female tourist repeated, her face worried as one of the reception robots turned to her.
"You scare me so much," she said while checking. After that, the female tourist scan her passport and enter her stay date. The machine gave her a key card.
"The process of receiving guests' rooms has been completed. We hope you will have a great vacation at our hotel," the robot employee announced.
The video of the Argentine female tourist went viral, causing mixed reactions on social media. Some netizens expressed their discomfort, saying that this was like a horror film.
While others were more optimistic with the argument: "At least they don't have the bad attitude of real people".
The Henn Na Hotel, first opened in Nagasaki in 2015, now has more than 20 branches across Japan, including Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto. The hotel has even expanded its international business to Seoul and New York.
One of the hotel's branches is Henn na Hotel Maihama Tokyo Bay, famous for its robot theme with a restaurant theme.
Japanese media reported that the hotel has cut more than half of its robot staff and replaced them with humans to maintain service quality. The reason is that robots often misunderstand or are unable to handle customer complaints effectively.
In China, service robots have also been used in limited roles such as delivering food, supporting customers with basic services.
Before the video about hotels in Japan, netizens enthusiastically commented: "This is just a small step forward on the path of AI to completely replace humans", " Looks really convenient! But that robot khung bo looked so real. It's a little scary...".
