The high-tech luxury resort in the Huis Ten Bosch amusement park in Nagasaki prefecture will have ten “actroids” supplementing the human staff. The multi-lingual robots will mimic human behavior like breathing and blinking, and are reportedly capable of responding to human body language and tone of voice.
Some of the robots will receive guests at the front desk — communicating in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and English — while the rest will perform tasks like carrying luggage and cleaning. The 72-room hotel is slated to open in July 2015, and a night’s stay will range in price from about $60-$120.
The hotel hopes that robot labor will reduce operating costs, and increase efficiency. "In the future, we’d like to have more than 90% of hotel services operated by robots,” Huis Ten Bosch president Hideo Sawada said at a press conference.
The hotel’s slogan is “A Commitment for Evolution.” And the “Henn” in the hotel’s name plays on the words for “change” and “strange” in Japanese. There will also be an unusual bidding system for rooms during peak season, allowing guests to offer more when demand is high.
The sleek, futuristic addition to Huis Ten Bosch will be a stark contrast to the rest of the Netherlands-themed park which features full scale replicas of traditional Dutch buildings.
