Hotel offers $1 rooms for guests who live stream everything
Visitors to Fukuoka, Japan can get a hotel room at the bargain price of $1—but there’s quite a catch.
To take advantage of the deal, visitors must agree to live-stream almost everything. That doesn’t include using the bathroom, which is outside the range of the table-mounted camera, and the guests are permitted to turn out the lights during sleep, the Washington Post reported.
Everything else is fair game for 24 hours.
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“Young people nowadays don’t care much about the privacy,” 27-year-old Tetsuya Inoue, the hotel’s manager, told CNN.
Inoue was looking for ideas to broaden revenues for the 30-year-old guesthouse, which his grandmother owns, when he hit upon the idea of streaming after an English visitor livestreamed his own stay, according to the Washington Post.
While a $1 a night price is clearly unprofitable, Inoue hopes to monetize the gimmick by selling advertising against the live stream, according to CNN. YouTube allows streams to sell ads once they reach 4,000 views.
The hotel’s YouTube channel, which started streaming just this week, has quickly gained popularity. It had 6,000 subscribers as of Thursday, triple the number a day earlier.
The hotel does warn guests to shield their passports and credit-card numbers from the camera, according to media reports. The camera also does not have sound, although guests can activate its microphone if they wish, CNN reported.
Guest are also asked not to have sex or engage in “lewd activity,” according to media reports.
Just two rooms out of the 10 in the guesthouse come with the streaming offer, according to CNN. When a room is unoccupied, Inoue turns the camera on himself working in the office.
The hotel did not respond to a list of e-mailed questions from CBS MoneyWatch, but Inoue told CNN that four people have taken him up on the $1 offer so far.
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