A hotel in Fukuoka, Japan, is offering a one-night stay for $1. Sounds like a steal, right? Well, you might surrender some of your privacy since you’ll have to livestream your time there.
Guests who spend the night at the hotel — named Asahi Ryokan — have been asked to pay $1 per night as long as they livestream their stay. The founder, Tetsuka Inoue, has allowed this as a way to “use the internet to bring in a new audience and a new revenue stream,” according to CNN.
“This is a very old ryokan and I was looking into a new business model,” he told CNN. “Our hotel is on the cheaper side, so we need some added value, something special that everyone will talk about.”
The livestream only captures video. So anything you say won’t be heard to viewers.
Guests can turn the lights off. The bathroom can’t be viewed, either, according to CNN and USA Today, who both reported on the hotel.
And, per The Washington Post, guests “have to appear on a constant live stream from inside their room, as long as they don’t have sex.”
The videos are available on One Dollar Hotel.
“Young people nowadays don’t care much about the privacy,” Inoue told CNN. “Some of them say it’s OK to be (watched) for just one day.”
The goal to reach a larger audience has worked so far. Per The Washington Post, the hotel’s YouTube stream has 3,000 new subscribers.