The Multiple Applications of Amazon’s Alexa for Hospitality
It is no surprise that Amazon’s dominant position in the U.S. smart speaker market will continue through this year with rivals like Google and Apple only making slight dents in Amazon Echo market share, according to a report published by eMarketer. The analyst firm estimates Amazon will easily hold onto its top spot through 2021, when nearly 70% of total U.S. smart speaker owners will continue to use an Amazon Echo device.
People are welcoming smart speakers to their homes and when ‘home away from home’ during their hotel stays, in addition to using Siri or Google’s voice search as their portable voice assistants, having Amazon’s Alexa in their hotel room, provides the type of engagement that will make their hotel stay more enjoyable.
Alexa for Hospitality offers device fleet management to build Alexa capabilities at scale. Alexa can make certain routine tasks for guests very seamless. Among others, playing music, checking the weather, calling the front desk, ordering room service, controlling in-room temperature or lighting, and even checking out can be easily accomplished through your in-room Alexa device. For hotels, the use of voice immersive experiences can help increase revenues, reduce costs, and improve guest satisfaction.
Properties already using Alexa have discovered how they can customize their guest experience to allow them to easily access their services and amenities using just their voice. Some examples include asking things like:
“Alexa, when is happy hour,” or “Alexa, what is today’s room service special,” or “Alexa, what restaurants are on this property.”
When your staff is reduced or you simply prefer keep your staff more focused on more relevant guest interactions, Alexa for Hospitality can also provide guests with some of the most common requests, such as:
“Alexa, contact the front desk” or “Alexa, help me check out” or “Alexa, what are the pool hours”
One of the great advantages of this integration is that you can enable Alexa as the hub of the room, creating a guest-centric experience through the power of voice. Alexa provides an experience that all guests can enjoy. Guests can say:
“Alexa, play music” or “Alexa, turn up the temperature” or “Alexa, reserve a table”
In addition to that, Alexa for Hospitality offers Dynamic language switching between English and Spanish. Guests and staff can converse with Alexa in English or Spanish and Alexa will respond automatically in the language Alexa heard.
As far as privacy and security concerns, Amazon also promises that Alexa for Hospitality has been built with guest privacy in mind including multiple layers of privacy protections. Guests’ voice recordings are not saved. No personal information needs to be shared with Alexa to use the device.
If you’re interested in learning more about this option for your hotel, you can head over to this Getting Started Checklist to become more familiar with the process.
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Thank you for reading. Until next time, this is Manuel Gil del Real (MGR).
Photo Credit: Amazon
