Story Archive

Afterward, the Guests are Complete Rex

“It’s becoming difficult to secure enough labor at hotels,” says manager Yukio Nagai of the Henn na (“weird” in Japanese) Hotel Maihama Tokyo Bay, in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. “To solve that problem, we have robots serving guests.” Not just any robots, but Jurassic Park-like robotic dinosaurs, which greet guests when they arrive, triggered by motion sensors. To signal their intent, the dinobots wear bellboy hats, but Nagai admits some guests find the monsters a bit “unnerving” — “We haven’t quite figured out when exactly the guests want to be served by people, and when it’s OK to be served by robots,” he said. (RC/AFP) ...Easy: when they demand to be served by people, serve them to the dinosaurs.