Futuristic hotels for business travelers in China and Japan

After staying at a Henn Na or the FlyZoo hotels, your regular lodging will seem merely serviceable. Here’s a look at Japan’s Henn Na and China’s FlyZoo futuristic hotels.

Japan’s Henn Na Hoteru or Henn Na Hotels, owned by H.I.S., are renowned for high-tech features. In English, the hotel’s name roughly translates into “Strange” or “Weird” Hotel. 

At the Henn Na near the Kansai Airport in Osaka, guests will find a hot springs facility, and a lobby that mimics being underwater. But most cool? The front desk is staffed by robotic dinosaurs.
 
“The dinosaurs are somewhat gimmicky,” admitted Jay Allen of the website Unseen Japan, but “Henn Na has used the concept to push other technology and innovations that benefit travelers by offering a ‘futuristic’ stay experience.”  
 
Allen points out that Henn Na Hotels feature state-of-the-art equipment in rooms, including a steam closet (for steaming clothes and killing bacteria), a smartphone with local internet connectivity for roaming the city, and an AI-powered,  in-room remote control, for guests to call home, stream videos, control the room’s lighting and serve as a remote for the TV. 
 
A new Henn Na Hotel in Tokyo Ginza was built specifically for business travelers, and at the front desk, guests are greeted by humanoid “female” robots. The
robot staff
 not only greets guests, but checks them into their rooms. The robot speaks English, Chinese, Korean and Japanese, and can smile, blink and move her arms. 

SEE: 5G mobile networks: An insider’s guide (free PDF) (TechRepublic)    

For the Ginza-located hotel, each room also features a 4K television, as shown in the hotel’s promotional video. Robots are assigned tasks such as cleaning the windows and floors, but humans make the beds and handle communications.
 
In August, a new Henn Na Hotel in Tokyo Tawaramachi in the Suginami City area opened with a holographic staff, a holographic ninja, a dinosaur, as well as an anime character.
 
A tablet-like device adjusts the lights, and not just dark to light, but offers a “mood preset” that includes such choices as “relax,” “focus,” “sunset,” “spring,”  as well as set the temperature, and stream movies. Guests can also order off an interactive menu. 
 
“Japan faces a rapidly aging and dwindling population and is constantly seeking technology to enable businesses to do more, with less staff,” Allen said.
 
“Japan faces a huge influx of tourists, including an expected rush for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics,” he added. “This means it needs staff who can speak multiple languages; not just English, but Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian and other languages. This personnel crunch, combined with an increasing need for foreign language support can, in some cases, be met more quickly and cheaply with AI and robotics.”
 
Linguistic diversity is an issue in Japan and the current dinosaur robot staff are limited to Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean, but “is likely to change as AI technology evolves,” Allen said.
 
“One of the hot new gifts of the year in Japan is a robot bear called Koupen-chan, which responds contextually to phrases from its owner and offers expressions of support and sympathy. I can see this technology evolving to the point where the robots are no longer a gimmick, such as with Henn Na, but are offering full-on interactive assistance in a variety of spoken languages,” he said.