Cyber Cafe with beds or eSports Hotel? We visit the SEM9 Senai Hotel in Johor

The first eSports hotel in Southeast Asia has just opened in Johor. It’s called the SEM9 Senai Hotel and it has rooms that feature high-powered gaming PCs and consoles designed with the gamer in mind. The question is, what exactly is an eSports Hotel? Is it just a cyber cafe with a bed? And is it worth staying there?

The concept of an eSports hotel isn’t new. There are several esports hotels and stays in places like the US, Taiwan and Japan, among others. But, for Southeast Asia, this is reportedly the very first eSports hotel. SEM9 Senai—named after the Southeast Asian eSports organisation—describes its first eSports hotel as a hotel with rooms “tastefully decked with LED lights” and “ultra high-performance gaming computers powered by the latest Nvidia graphics”. 

Speaking to the SEM9 Senai rep, he said that this was a good way to revamp older hotels and provide a more unique experience and that they’ve seen a big uptick in terms of booking and interest from the public. You can read more about the types of rooms they have here.

Our thoughts on SEM9 Senai

We only got to spend about an hour in this place, so it wasn’t a whole lot of time to really experience everything. But our initial impressions are that it’s more of a gaming hotel than an esports hotel right now—and those are two very different things.

It reminds us a lot of a cyber cafe with beds, so you can come to hang out with your friends and play video games. But there isn’t a whole lot of connection with the multi-billion dollar eSports industry.

That said, there are building blocks here to potentially become a place that’s attractive to eSports organisations who are traveling to tournaments. It has good equipment and good internet—and it’s also really close to the airport.

It’s basically just an average hotel when it comes to amenities—the rooms are mostly all of similar size with the same basic bathrooms. Adding the PCs and RBG lights does fancy the place up quite a bit, so for the target market it’s selling to (eSports enthusiasts and gamers) it might be attractive enough for them to book the place for a couple of nights.

You can book a room here.

Related reading

• Would you stay in an eSports hotel? Prices start at RM 122 for a half-day stay