Alexa for hotels lets guests order room service, control in-room smart devices [Updated]

Enlarge (credit: Amazon)

Hotel rooms will serve as the newest homes for Amazon's Alexa starting this summer. Amazon announced a special version of its virtual assistant, Alexa for Hospitality, that will live across Echo devices placed in hotels, vacation rentals, and other similar locations.

Alexa in these devices will be able to do special things for both hospitality professionals and their customers. Amazon claims its Alexa for Hospitality experience will let hotel professionals "deepen engagement" through its voice controls that customers can use. Hotels can also customize some of the experience that they want their customers to have by choosing default music services, creating special Alexa Skills that only their guests can use, and monitor device online status and other connectivity issues.

Guests staying in a room with an Echo device will likely find the experience either convenient or invasive. Guests can ask Alexa to do things like order room service, answer questions about hotel services, control some in-room connected devices like lights and blinds, and more. Alexa Skills will also be available, so guests can use a Skill such as Flight Tracker to check the status of their flight before checking out.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments