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One Dollar Hotel
Shutterstock.com (tv monitor); via YouTube ($1 hotel)
A hotel guest eats breakfast on the livestream.
What would you do for a practically free hotel room? At the Asahi Ryokan hotel in Fukuoka, Japan, guests can pay just 100 yen (about $1) per night—in exchange for having their entire stay livestreamed on YouTube. The owner, 27-year-old Tetsuya Inoue, recently inherited the hotel and wanted to make it “something special that everyone will talk about.” He began offering this deal at the end of 2019. There are some restrictions on the livestream: For starters, there are no cameras in the bathroom and no audio is broadcast (unless the guest chooses to switch on the microphone). But otherwise, viewers can see what guests in Room 8 are up to 24 hours a day. And so far, thousands have tuned in. While many people shudder at the idea of being watched in their hotel room, Inoue remains confident that plenty of guests will be at ease in front of the camera. “Young people nowadays don’t care much about the privacy,” he told CNN. “Some of them say it’s OK to be [watched] for just one day.”