Fans of Amazon’s Alexa will soon find the digital personal assistant in more hotel rooms with the launch of Alexa for Hospitality this week. Although Alexa in hotels is not new—the Wynn Las Vegas has been slowly rolling out Amazon Echo devices to 400 rooms and suites since 2017 with the goal of eventually have them in all 4,748 rooms—hotels were using the Alexa for Business platform to manage the personal digital assistant. Now, Marriott has signed a deal with Amazon to provide custom Echo devices equipped with Alexa for Hospitality at some Marriott, Autograph Collection, Aloft, St Regis, and Westin brands in the next couple of months. The Charlotte, N.C., Marriott City Center and the Spectrum in Irvine, Calif., will be part of the beta program. The new platform will allow guests to use Alexa not just for playing music and turning on the lights or TV, they will also be able to talk to the front desk, order room service, and search for recommendations. Alexa for Hospitality can be “trained” for each location and updated to reflect seasonal availability of restaurants and activities.
In a press release, Jennifer Hsieh, vice president for customer experiences and innovation, Marriott International, said, “So many of our guests use voice technology in their home, and we want to extend that convenience to their travel experience.” Although Alexa for Hospitality is not yet able to connect with a guest’s own Amazon account for music and audio books, that functionality is expected to be incorporated before the end of the year. Once a guest checks out, Alexa is supposed to disconnect from that personal account.
Although Alexa has provoked privacy concerns in the past (the digital assistant randomly recorded a conversation from one customer and sent it to her colleague Amazon has said that guests’ commands to Alexa will be deleted daily, and hotels will not have access to recordings of guest interactions with the digital assistant.
While there are definitely advantages to using Alexa for Hospitality in a hotel, for example ordering food and making recommendations without having to use the phone, for guests who are concerned about privacy problems, there is always the option to unplug the Echo and go old school.
