World's first robot hotel forced to axe automated staff

In 2015 when it opened in the Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan, the Henn-na Hotel (nearest translation "Weird Hotel") proudly unveiled its facilities, manned predominantly by 243 robots.

The robots included a velociraptor receptionist, a robotic gardener, a one-armed claw in charge of handling luggage, and machines like a bedside table butler robot, which could arrange a wake-up call or give you the weather forecast.

Four years later and the hotel has been forced to get rid of more than half of its automated employees following increasing complaints from guests about glitches in the machines that have made their stays unbearable.

The bedside table butlers, for example, started waking up guests who snored in the middle of the night, mistaking the noises for voice commands.

According to a report by Forbes, it turns out that the robots, rather than reducing human workload, increased it because the machines were not capable of doing the tasks they were assigned.

WATCH | Strange encounters with the robotic staff at the Henn-na Hotel

Other casualties of the hotel’s lay-offs include the pair of velociraptor-shaped receptionists, incapable of performing seemingly simple receptionist tasks, and a robot concierge which couldn’t answer questions about nearby tourist attractions.

Turns out that instead of eliminating the frustrations of bad service, Henn-na’s robots simply aggravated the problems they were meant to solve. In the end it’s the simplest machine that’s survived the shake up — the one-armed claw keeps its job because it doesn’t have to do much other than move luggage around and doesn’t need much AI to function. In fact, it’s used in many other hotels for the same purpose.  

So much for the hotel founder’s declaration at the opening of the second robot hotel that, by "having robots in charge of the reception and placing robots everywhere, we aim to make it the most efficient hotel in the world".