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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Air France integration coming to Amazon’s Alexa and now it looks like Marriott is taking things a step further as it brings Alexa into its hotel rooms.
According to the Financial Times (subscription required) Marriott is partnering with Amazon for the launch of “Alexa for Hospitality” which will give users access to a host of a hotel’s amenities with a simple set of vocal commands.
The idea appears to be that hotel guests will be able to order room service, make spa bookings and adjust various features of their rooms (lighting, temperature etc..) by interacting with Amazon’s voice assistant and, unsurprisingly, guests will also be able to use Alexa to play their Amazon music libraries through the room’s sound system.
Up until now Hilton has been main hotel chain leading the way with in-room automation but Marriott looks to be leaping ahead by bypassing a central set of physical controls (like you’ll find on Hilton’s app) in favor of voice commands.
Marriott hasn’t given any details of which specific hotels will get Alexa integration first but we do know that the new technology will first be offered in “certain Marriott, Westin, St Regis, Aloft and Autograph Collection properties in the US“.
Thoughts
I have mixed feelings about this. I already have an Echo Dot at home and I’m as yet unconvinced as to its worth (luckily it was cheap!) but I can see some merits to having this technology in a hotel room.
I can see how controlling a room’s temperature with voice commands could be useful (it has to be better than trying to hack the infernal thermostats we have now) and I guess controlling the room lights with voice commands could be good in certain circumstances too….but I can’t imagine trusting voice commands to book spa treatments let alone order room service – the scope for mistakes and frustration is just too great.
The reality is that I think I’d prefer hotel chains to spend a bit more time getting their current offerings just right before they try to make imperfect offerings available to us via voice command….but then perhaps I’m just being a Luddite 🙂
Anyone else have any thoughts on Alexa integration in hotel rooms?
