They're more private than the video (used only by internal staff/guests/partners), but a much bigger waste of money.
One of the features was a countertop screen that displayed information like the time and date. I asked the tour guide about how the countertop screen worked, since it didn't look or feel like an LCD - the images were much too dim and the surface felt like acrylic. She laughed and said that they hadn't known what to do, so the night before it was supposed to be finished, someone ran out to the department store and bought some translucent plastic, and then installed a video projector underneath the counter, pointing up. Sure enough, the cabinet was glued shut, so as not to ruin the illusion.
Everything else felt similar. Standard (and awesome) futuristic concepts, but executed cheaply, and not really usable beyond the staged usage scenario. It was like showing off a flying car that can only fly a foot off the ground and by the way you're not allowed to look underneath.
Now, the Surface could actually be a neat product. If it were affordable enough for any small office, or for people to use in their home, it would probably sell well. If they actually developed only one tablet platform, that scaled up from their phones to the Surface with only minor modifications to UI, they'd have a serious contender for a touch based platform.
But with something that's just a toy for companies with extra money to spend entertaining their guests, with its own APIs so that software isn't portable between it and other products, and no real significant tablet offerings to fill in the gap between the phone and the Surface, it just doesn't make that much sense. I doubt that they can be making much money on it.