In the competitive hospitality industry,
it's important for a hotel to have some kind of shtick.
An onsite casino, a cheap buffet,
affordable by-the-hour rates.
You know, it all depends what you're into.
As for Taiwanese brand 168IN,
well, they've got normal hotels,
like the stay in Taipei
that we were at during Computex this year.
But then once the show was over,
they invited us to come see something pretty different
that they're doing in nearby Taoyuan.
So behind me is the iHotel, a gaming hotel,
the first of its kind in Taiwan.
As for what makes a hotel gaming?
Well, apparently it's 55 something, 4K something,
DX racer, presumably chairs, and GTX 1080Ti's?
What?
Okay, we're gonna have to go check this out.
Or check in, as it were.
Get it?
It's a hotel joke.
The check-in process is pretty normal
other than the king-size helping of RGB.
So you check in.
And then you check in.
They've got their GeForce iCafe certification
proudly on display.
They're actually the only hotel in Taiwan
to meet NVIDIA's standard.
And then the lobby opens up to, well,
these guys know their audience.
The included breakfast is served along that side.
And then on this side, well,
some hotels have a rockin' gym,
but 168IN figured that a big 12-player LAN center
was a better bet.
And if their guests really wanted to get their heart rate up,
they would go and plug into the HTC VIVE VR machine
that's over there in the hallway.
So there's nobody here right now.
But anyone staying here can use these machines
as much as they want.
The idea behind this common area
is that the guests can get to know each other
by coming out of their rooms to play games together.
And eSports teams can hold practices
throughout the day or night.
It's open 24 hours.
So the Australian team, Blank eSports,
was actually here for two months during Overwatch contenders
and apparently basically never left the lobby.
And these are the best machines in the building.
With Core i7-8700s, 16 gigs of,
ooh, is that RGB RAM?
Very nice, very nice.
GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards,
165 hertz G-Sync gaming monitors,
about 10 terabytes of local storage for game files,
and premium gaming peripherals.
The team was apparently thrilled with the setup here
compared to their normal routine,
which is to find a house to rent,
to ship all of their gear up,
and then ship it all back when they finish.
So the plan from iHotel is to upgrade the hardware here
every year to make sure that they stay state-of-the-art.
Now, let's head into one of the rooms.
In-hotel laundry is actually something
I wish more places did.
It seems like such an obvious way
to make a longer stay more comfortable.
Anyway, here we are.
This is their standard room
with either two twins or one full bed.
You have got to be kidding me.
They are really proud of a lot of the gamer-centric changes
that they've made to the standard hotel setup.
So for example, every one of the rooms
has dual sound-isolating doors
that have been verified to keep inside noise
to 40 decibels or less,
and comes equipped with not one, but two separate full,
sledge gaming rigs equipped with 32-inch monitors,
GTX 1060 video cards, Core i5 CPUs, 16 gigs of RAM,
a full set of gaming-grade peripherals,
including the chair, and yes, again,
with the 10 terabytes of local storage
so you can jump on your favorite game launcher
and download whatever you want to it.
The boot drive wipes itself upon reboot,
so you don't have to worry about someone
accidentally getting into your account
if you check out and forget to sign up.
Some other aspects of the room that I appreciate
as someone who travels a fair amount
is that there are tons of outlets,
both normal wall plugs and USB ones
so that you can charge all of your crap.
And then this one in particular on the bed here
is freaking brilliant.
Why doesn't every hotel do this?
An international plug in the room,
so you don't have to, I don't know, do anything.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Arrive, you're all jet-lagged,
realize that you can't plug in your whatever thing
and spend the first couple of hours of your vacation
buying some stupid adapter
that you accidentally left sitting on the bed at home.
The TV setup is pretty slick too.
So I don't recognize this brand,
and I get it, I don't know, it looks okay,
but it's a 4K TV that, more importantly,
is connected in a really cool way.
So this system over here closest to the bed
has an HDMI connection over to that TV.
So that means that you can run anything you want on it.
You just set this up on here, full screen,
and bippity boppity, wham!
You are watching Linus Tech Tips
from the comfort of your bed.
And it's not just limited to their systems.
So here on the side of the bed, again,
is another HDMI input for the TV,
a headphone jack so that you can listen
using headphones if you'd prefer,
and a USB port so that if you were running,
say, for example, your phone as an output to the TV,
you wouldn't run out of battery
while it sits here on the nightstand.
Now, if you don't pack the necessary cables,
they provide them for free,
along with a handful of other useful extras.
I mean, most of our focus so far
has been on the gaming features,
but this is still a hotel.
So if the bed or the bathroom sucks,
you're going to have a bad time.
Fortunately, they went full fancy
with the new Orland mattresses.
They put a fridge in every room,
which I personally really appreciate
because it is impossible to find cold water over here.
And check these out, Japanese-style toilets
with heated seats and water cleaners,
if you prefer those.
Squeaky clean.
This next room style is actually one
that they don't advertise on their site.
So it's designed to look and feel, kind of, like,
a college dorm for them nostalgia feels.
With that said, other than replacing the regular bed
with a bunk bed, it is pretty similar to the standard room.
Although, there is one thing that I missed before
when I was showing the standard room.
This is really cool.
Ah, it's over here, I've got to crawl under the desk.
Every room gets its own dedicated Wi-Fi access point,
so you don't have to worry about, you know,
getting that room at the end of the hall
with the crappy reception.
Now it's time for the best for last portion of our tour.
They only have one of these, but this is the capsule room.
It's their standard room, but in space.
So first, they've got the Wall-O gaming machines.
Six in total, so you could have your whole team
in here at once.
And then second is the sleeping pods.
So each of these things is equipped with a memory foam
mattress.
It's isolated for noise and light.
It's got individual climate control.
It's got its own power connectivity,
so regular AC and USB.
It contains its own safe, and check this out.
It's got its own TV.
So in the capsule room, you can travel with your friends
or colleagues and never actually see them.
If you get stuck,
there's an SOS button, by the way.
So you don't have to worry about that.
So then, who exactly is staying in a place like this though?
I mean, you can't fill up an entire hotel year round
just based on traveling e-sports players.
Well, as it turns out, after they built the iHotel,
they found business coming from unexpected places.
Local families,
have come to stay as a treat for their kids
for doing well in school or whatever,
because they don't have a nice gaming PC at home.
Some folks just come and stay here for the fast internet.
International stock traders and would-be concert goers
who want to have their best chance to buy a hot ticket
that's likely to sell out in 10 seconds
have frequented this place.
And all other things being equal,
I would definitely choose a hotel like this
for Linus Media Group's travels.
I mean, even if we didn't end up using the machines
for video editing, the peripherals, the extra monitors,
things like that are fantastic.
And I mean, I no longer take for granted
stuff that seems fairly simple,
like a decent sized desk and a wired network connection.
In fact, most of the big hotels that I've stayed at
in the last couple of years
have been disabling their Ethernet ports
for some inexplicable reason.
So let me know what you guys think.
Are you a gamer?
Are you some other kind of consumer
who would be interested in this?
Or do you think the whole concept is just crazy?
I want to see your comments below.
So thanks for watching, guys.
If you just liked this video, you can hit that button.
But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed,
or maybe consider checking out the iHotel.
We'll have that linked in the video description.
Also linked down there is our merch store,
which has cool shirts like this one,
and our community forum, which you should totally join.