a cheaper hotel night in exchange for a sleep study

The company NTT Data is offering future guests of a Tokyo hotel the chance to pay less for their hotel night in exchange for a study on the quality of their sleep.

The idea of ​​the Japanese company NTT Data is to study the sleep of guests of a hotel which will be inaugurated in January 2024, near Shinagawa station, in Tokyo. In exchange, users will pay less for their stay. NTT Data is not a hotel group at all, but a major specialist in the collection and management of digital data. This company is always looking for ways to collect more information, particularly on human health, and one of the best times to collect this data is during sleep.

The company therefore joined forces with a hotel group to create a new generation of capsule hotels, these small, inexpensive hotels for businessmen. It’s not a real room, but just a sort of private capsule where you can’t stand up with just a comfortable bed, a small flat screen and a lamp on the ceiling. Throughout the rest of the hotel there are changing rooms shared with the bathrooms and toilets. It’s very minimalist, but very practical and above all, half the price of a classic hotel.

The company collects health and sleep data through electronic sensors and if the customer agrees, these sensors are activated in the capsule. It is after this agreement that he receives a special discount on the price of the night. These sensors contain, for example, infrared cameras which will monitor movements at night. How many times we turn over, where again the moments of paradoxical sleep. Then there are also microphones to listen to breathing and possibly snoring as well as sensors to track heart rate and body temperature. Finally, it is also possible to wear an electronic activity bracelet to have more precise data.

Data for other companies

In the morning, NTT Data will offer a short health check-up, which details the quality of sleep. He will say, for example, if clients have sleep apnea. If the data seems to show a problem, the company will also refer them to doctors who treat those problems.

The group will also make money by selling all this data to other companies, such as pharmaceutical groups or medical equipment manufacturers who often have difficulty recovering large quantities of data for their own studies. Of course, the data sold is anonymous. The end customer will only know the age, gender and weight of the customers who agreed to take part in the experiment.