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Amazon's Alexa to be concierge in hotel rooms
Amazon's virtual assistants will be placed in several Marriott International hotel rooms.
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Amazon's virtual assistants will be placed in several Marriott International hotel rooms for guests to control room settings or get connected to the front desk with the sound of their voice. (Shutterstock/beeboys)
Calling to order room service will soon be a thing of the past, thanks to Amazon’s partnership with Marriott International.
The New York Magazine reports that Amazon will be placing its virtual assistants, known as Alexa or Amazon Echo, in several hotel rooms across the world. From there, guests will be able to control room settings such as temperature or lights, as well as get connected to the front desk, all with the sound of their voice.
Guests will not yet be able to use their Amazon accounts to sign into the service, called Alexa for Hospitality, but Amazon said they were working on a way to connect the two, so that users could have a more personalized experience.
“One of the main veins of feedback that we are hearing over and over again is that customers want Alexa in more contexts,” said Daniel Rausch, Amazon’s vice-president of the smart home division.
Read also: Amazon to quiet Alexa's cackling
Rausch added that hotels using Alexa for Hospitality would “have access to anonymized and aggregated data about how guests are using Alexa in their hotel room”.
While security and privacy are a concern, Amazon confirmed that the hotels would not have access to any individual’s voice data from any specific room, and any recordings would be deleted daily.
Alexa for Hospitality devices will be muted by default and are described by an Amazon spokesperson as an “opt-in” experience. (sul/wng)
