Strange Hotel

What do you do when you are a xenophobic culture with a complex and often indecipherable language based primarily on hard-to-learn pictograms with a severely contracting and graying population? English please? A country that does not want immigration at all, mistrusts foreigners and makes becoming a citizen almost impossible, an economic powerhouse in fading times with a population that is project to fall by as much as 30% by 2050? We call it Japan.

What’s worse, it’s becoming a nation of too few workers supporting too many retirees. “The aging of Japan is thought to outweigh all other nations, as the country is purported to have the highest proportion of elderly citizens; 33.0% are above age 60, 25.9% are aged 65 or above, 12.5% aged 75 or above, as of September 2014.” Wikipedia. Asian labor shortages at the bottom of the labor scale, from construction workers to housekeeper, are covered almost everywhere else in Asia with Filipinos, residents of South Asia, etc. Not so Japan.

Even for foreign students educated at Japanese universities, the post-graduate welcome mat is virtually nonexistent. Fewer than 10% of such graduates find work in Japan, and the path to citizenship is usually impossible even when decades are spent in the country. Despite statements to the contrary and despite “facing an imminent labor shortage as its population ages, Japan has done little to open itself up to immigration. In fact, [as many temporary foreign workers] have discovered, the government is doing the opposite, actively encouraging both foreign workers and foreign graduates of its universities and professional schools to return home while protecting tiny interest groups.” New York Times, January 2, 2011.

So what to do about it all? From the assembly lines in the few remaining manufacturing industries left in Japan to elderly care, Japan is accelerating its research and development in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. If Bill Gates and Elon Musk dread a robotic,Terminator-like takeover, Japan has to be the epicenter of that robo-fear!

Exactly how extreme is this quest for robotic alternatives to allowing immigration to fill the ranks of needed workers? Try the Henn-na (“Strange”) Hotel in the Dutch-oriented Huis Ten Bosch (“House in the Forest”) theme park located in Nagasaki, Japan. Scheduled to open this July, this modestly price hotel boasts… er… no human staff. Instead, just about every service is provided by friendly (we hope!) robots. A bit too lifelike (see above picture), if you ask me.

“The robot experience starts when you first step foot into the hotel. Robots will help you with your bags, as well as manage the front desk and other hotel services — even clean your room for you… Besides just having a fully robotic staff, the hotel has some other high-tech touches. For instance, facial-recognition technology will replace room keys, so you'll be able to unlock your door with your face.

 “The park says that the robots will reduce costs associated with running the hotel, and ensure comfort for guests. They should also help you save some money on tips [but Japanese don’t tip anyway]… The first building in the hotel will open with 72 rooms, followed by another 72-room building next year. A single room will be priced at 7,000 yen a night, or around $59. A twin room will set you back 9,000 yen, or $76… If the hotel reaches maximum capacity during peak season they'll bid off rooms, though the upper limit will be 14,000 yen (around $119) for a single room.

“‘We will make the most efficient hotel in the world,’ company President Hideo Sawada said during a news conference, according to Japan Times. ‘In the future, we'd like to have more than 90 percent of hotel services operated by robots.’” PCMag.com, February 5^th.Wonder if robotic call girls will roam the lobby. Such a warm and fuzzy thought, and for those who argue that we here in the U.S. need a solid border barrier with Mexico to preserve American jobs, I wonder what the barrier device will be against robots? Maybe if they are imbued with white plastic skin, no one will care. But how long before this technology developed in Japan will become the norm here in the U.S.?

My friend and business consultant Dennis Duitch has this little reminder about work life here in the United States in the near future: “‘HALF OF CURRENT JOBS WILL EVENTUALLY BE AUTOMATED OUT OF EXISTENCE… as the technology revolution is widening inequality byincreasing demand for the best brains while reducing demand for everyone else – raising the specter of mass unemployment as intelligent machines do for middle-class employment what their dumb brothers have already done for working-class jobs… Main Street companies in general are trying to do more with less rather than employing new people, replacing fixed costs with variable ones, and putting long-term plans on hold… As nimbleness is replacing clout as the most prized quality, business models can no longer rely on ‘sustainable competitive advantage.’ (Almost half the Fortune 500 list companies in 1999 have fallen off it since)… Living in a world of secular stagnation, jobless growth, zero-sum competition and stability-threatening inequality,’ it’s getting tougher to remain optimistic.  [THE ECONOMIST - Jan 31, 15]” Ouch!

I’m Peter Dekom, and “strange” will someday become “normal,” so I truly wonder what the future “strange” will be after that?!