The post Hotels Are Staffing Robots—and Guests Are Freaking Out appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

In brief Hotels around the world are increasingly utilizing humanoid robots to check guests in, answer questions, and reduce staffing costs. While some travelers embrace the high-tech experience, others feel uneasy, especially when robots appear too human. Despite technical glitches and guest complaints, the hospitality robot market is booming, with an expected value of surpassing $2 billion by 2030. A TikTok video went viral on Monday, showing a woman laughing nervously as she backs away from a humanoid robot at Japan’s Henn-na Hotel. “Don’t look at me,” she said, as the machine watched her. The scene underscores growing fears that robots are replacing humans in the workplace. The awkward check-in has racked up hundreds of thousands of views and tapped into a deeper fear: robots that are a little too human. “They looked eerily similar to humans and are honestly very creepy,” one traveler said in a shared video. “This is freaky,” another said. The guest’s discomfort reflects a trend in human-robot interaction, known as the “uncanny valley,” the eerie feeling that arises when machines look and behave almost like people, but not quite enough. As UC Berkeley Industrial Engineering Professor Ken Goldberg once told Decrypt, “I want a robot to look like a robot—it can maybe do some things, but I don’t want to confuse it with a real person.” From Tokyo to Las Vegas, hotels are experimenting with machines to greet guests, answer questions, serve food, and trim labor costs. While some travelers enjoy the futuristic novelty, others are unsettled by blinking eyes, synthetic smiles, and eerily lifelike gestures. A July 2023 report by Boutique Hotelier said 61% of hotel guests had positive reactions to service robots, while 28.5% expressed fear when approached by a robot server. In Japan, the Henn-na Hotel, also known as the “Strange Hotel,” has…

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Filed under: News - @ July 2, 2025 2:26 am