Unmanned 24/7 ‘trust’ bookshop launches in Dubai

Dubai gets its first 24/7 bookshop at Sports City, which doesn’t employ any staff and is not by any robots.

Book Hero, which has more than 20,000 novels in store, relies on a payment drop box called the Trust Box, making it the region’s first unmanned bookshop. The customers have to just drop their money in the box and be on their way.

Montserrat Martin, owner of the store, partnered up with Mohammad Al Qubaisi to come up with the idea, believing in customer trust. “We don’t employ staff simply because we trust our customers. I visit the place once a day to replace stock and collect money,” Martin said Gulf News.

Books are tagged with green and yellow stickers to indicate their prices, ranging from Dhs10 to Dhs20. Though most of the books on offer are in English and Arabic, there’s a selection for French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese books.