The hotel once boasted the use of robots that were just enough to lay off robots in bulk

The experience of spending 1 night at the hotel with the entire staff of Ishikawa Yosshihisa is not comfortable at all.

Every few hours during the night he was awakened by a human-shaped assistant knocking on the door and asked: "Sorry, I don't understand what you said. Can you repeat the request?"

It wasn't until 6 in the morning that Yoshihisa understood the problem: It turned out that his snoring made the robot misunderstand that he was ordered.

Turns out, robots are not good workers for the reception.Henn na or Stranger , after the noisy, no-show launch ceremony in 2015, which is recognized by Guinness as the first robot hotel in the world, had to fire its own "technology workers." "my weakness.

To date, the hotel has removed more than half of its 243 robots, most of them because they create more than help reduce it.

"We are no longer frequently asked to ask about robot related issues," said an employee who has worked for the hotel for three years.

Robots and other useful devices for the hotel industry have appeared a lot at the CES technology show last week. A self-driving bus can take visitors around; A Lenovo smart watch with Google's virtual assistant can turn on the light or read stories to you before going to bed. And a transport robot called Segway-Ninebot Loomo Delivery can take goods around building complexes.

Yotel and Aloft chain hotels in the US use high 3-feed robots to deliver mail, personal hygiene items and drinks to the rooms. Alibbaba had just released the Space Egg robot for the last year and Hilton hired a porter who was a robot.

However, the effort of Strange Hotel is somewhat more complicated. They want to use robots to deal with human labor shortages for tasks like carrying luggage, cocktail making. This hotel is located next to a theme park in the countryside and they are very short of workers.

Strange Hotel also aims to attract foreign tourists by targeting Japan - a country that produces smart toilets or even virtual girlfriends as a technologically advanced country.

"Experiencing a conversation with robots you will feel the warmth of people and see them work very effectively , " the hotel management company told the press on the first day of opening.

The guests also began to get annoyed when the robots couldn't catch up to Siri or Alexa.

At that time they had 80 robots. The initial positive reactions made the company decide to add more robots like a robot team like dogs or people dancing in the lobby.

That's when problems start to appear. Toshifumi Nakamura - a former resident of this hotel recalled that about half of the robots danced in the corridor were broken or needed to be replaced when he arrived here in mid-2016. Dynamic is human to solve arising problems.

The guests also began to get annoyed when the robots couldn't catch up to Siri or Alexa. A slow robotic assistant with simple dialogue function "Hello, where are you from" and adjusting the room temperature and the voice command light named Churi is an example. When the guests wanted to ask more difficult questions such as the opening time of the adjacent amusement park, Churi couldn't answer at all.

After a frustrating test with Churi, Atsushi Nishiguchi - a guest here in 2017, decided to call the receptionist for his questions but found out there was no phone in the room, instead the robot would treat justify this request. Finally, this person had to use a personal phone to meet the hotel's real staff.

Ishikawa says that he doesn't know how to turn off Churi.

"She left a bad reputation with the guests," said Hideo Sawada, president of the travel company that owns the hotel. In the end, Churi was one of the first fired robots.

Likewise, the hotel receptionist robot was fired after the guests asked questions that it could not answer such as flight schedules or tourist attractions near the city. Currently, a human employee will stand to answer questions in the hall.

Oe said the hotel must consider upgrading a few robots but the cost is quite high. Churi is a 4 year service, the technology is very outdated.

"Many people replace new phones every year, so it seems that 4 years makes Churi too old."

Some robots are expected to reduce the workload, but the fact is that someone still needs to stand by two robots at the check-in counter to copy the international visitor's passport.

2 luggage carriers are also useless because they can only access 24 rooms out of more than 100 hotel rooms. They can also only go on flat surfaces and can be damaged by water.

Luggage carryers are also useless, they can only go on planes.

"They are very slow and noisy. Sometimes they cause traffic jams when trying to cross each other," said Taishi Mito - a visitor here in 2017.

The new branches of the Strange Hotel are still using some really useful robots. Some other chains aim to use robots more reasonably and efficiently.

For example, in Sasebo - this hotel decided to invest in technology to get all the power from the solar panels and use face recognition technology to unlock the rooms.

The leader of Strange executives still did not give up the idea of ​​a hotel with no real employees, but he accepted the fact that there were only human jobs that could be done.