While Amazon’s Alexa has found a pretty successful spot in people’s homes, allowing them to ask about the weather or to add something onto their shopping list, one of the devices coolest features is how well it lends itself for hospitality.
Exploiting this potential, Amazon decided to partner up with Marriott Hotels to bring Alexa devices to their rooms, helping out guests with simple requests such as ordering room service and necessities without having to call anyone.
Alexa for Hospitality is Amazon’s plan to include their device in hotels, providing guests with a personalized experience and their own “virtual concierge.” The Alexa devices at Marriott hotels will be able to control all amenities within the room, play music, and provide guests with local recommendations of bars, restaurants, and other places.
-
Related Story: Your Amazon Echo Could Soon Have Its Own Memory
According to Mashable, the idea of Alexa for hospitality has two motivations: It gives Echo customers more opportunities to see Alexa in other scenarios, and it reduced the friction that travelers experience while being in a new place.
During an interview with Business Wire, Daniel Rausch, Vice President of Amazon, said that customers have been very receptive of Alexa, and that the company wants to provide the Echo experience everywhere that fits. “Alexa for Hospitality makes your hotel stay a little more like being at home and gives hospitality providers new ways to create memorable stays for their guests,” he said.
Amazon has also covered their bases when it comes to privacy issues, claiming that the hotel won’t have access to any voice recordings or interactions with Alexa. These recordings will also be deleted on a daily basis, and the hotel won’t have any way of monitoring or tracking their guests.
These Amazon Echos will be just like the ones you have at home with two big differences: the devices will only be able to connect at the hotel’s wifi, and they won’t be capable of having a factory reset, so they’re pretty useless once they’re outside of the hotel.
While this initiative is nothing new and it doesn’t display any technology that we haven’t seen before, it does cement Amazon as the main company of voice enabled software, which is shaping to become the most promising technology of the future.
