Without a doubt, the hot new guest room amenity is a virtual personal assistant such as Siri or Alexa. The voice-activated devices can help a guest decide where to eat and what to see during a stay, and they can even control functions such as turning down the lights and turning on the TV. It’s almost as if the in-room compendium has come to life.
Contributed by Juliana Shallcross
Among the hotels that have added Alexa devices to guest rooms are the Wynn and Encore resorts in Las Vegas (where Alexa controls the room function), the Acme Hotel in Chicago, Thompson Seattle, Westin Buffalo in New York, and the Village Hotels brand in the United Kingdom.
At the Best Western Plus Hawthorne Terrace in Chicago, just around the corner from Wrigley Field, the hotel has installed an Amazon Echo Dot in each guest room, but with some clever customization. Legendary Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray welcomes guests when they turn the device on (never mind that he passed away 20 years ago). Guests can still ask Harry/Alexa where to eat, when to check out and to send more towels up to their room. The Dot is docked into an iHome speaker and clock, allowing guests to play their music or set a wake-up call.
Meanwhile, Marriott International has been testing what it calls “Hey Siri” rooms at Aloft Hotels, using existing in-room iPads, and Alexa devices at other brands such as the W Hotel in Austin.
“Aloft Hotels is always exploring new technologies that evolve with the needs of our guests,” said Toni Stoeckl, global brand leader and vice president, distinctive select brands, at Bethesda, Maryland-based Marriott International.
AI isn’t limited to the guest rooms. Recently, Aloft Hotels piloted its new ChatBotlr, which allows guests to text a robot for service requests, find information about the hotel and connect with the front desk when they are off-property. The device will learn as time time goes on. “By leveraging natural language understanding and machine learning, ChatBotlr gets smarter the more it interacts with guests,” Stoeckl said.
Having an AI device at one property could merely be cute and novel, but utilizing it across thousands of hotel rooms is where the power and convenience of AI can really be seen.
In Las Vegas, Caesars Entertainment has been rapidly rolling out its own virtual concierge texting platform, called Ivy. Guests checked into a Caesars property can give their mobile number and get a text from Ivy letting them know she is there to answer requests – whether it be for dinner reservations, ideas on what to do in town or to buy show tickets (no app download is necessary).
Michael Marino, senior vice president and chief experience officer for Caesars Entertainment, said texting was an appealing service for Caesars because it’s the easiest way to communicate with people. “It’s not intrusive and you can do it on your own time,” he said.
But Ivy has more on guests than just their phone numbers. “As long as you’re in the database, she knows who you are, she knows what room you are checked in, she knows a little bit of information about you, enough to make some recommendations and help you get what you need when you ask for those questions.”
Most of the time, Ivy is generating responses to guests’ requests for hours of restaurants, pools or spa, and giving recommendations on where to eat and drink – typically, at a Caesars property. Response times are usually under a minute. If there’s a question that Ivy can’t answer, she’ll flag it for review from a human, Marino said.
Caesars has created a team of universal agents who are manning guests’ requests, but Marino insists they aren’t your usual call center reps, citing their full reservations privileges, not just for restaurants but also for hotel rooms. “They have the skills and ability for you to communicate with you in a way that is on brand and you feel comfortable with and book whatever it is you need,” he said.
Caesars started out using Ivy at its two boutique-like properties — The Cromwell and Nobu Las Vegas at Caesars Palace, and initially, it was on-site employees fielding the text requests. But it since has scaled to The Linq, Caesars Palace, Planet Hollywood and Harrah’s Southern California, for a total of 10,000 rooms with access to Ivy.
Similarly, The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas began using a texting service last year called Rose that makes on-property recommendations for hotel guests and also is available to play games and give a tour of the hotel’s art collection.
According to Mamie Peers, vice president of digital marketing at The Cosmopolitan, what separates Rose from other chatbots is her playful personality, which echos the Cosmopolitan’s naughty and nice brand identity.
“Anyone can use artificial intelligence,” she said. “But it means nothing if you’re not on brand in that space.”
As Ivy develops, Marino sees the service furthering integrating with Caesars’ customer database to make smarter recommendations for guests.
“We want to get the best answers and recommendations that are based on you personally, versus the math answer,” Marino said, likening the service to how Amazon makes recommendations for customers based on what they have searched for and recently purchased.
Beyond the guest rooms, artificial intelligence can help the back of the house by automating tasks in seemingly all departments from housekeeping (smart devices can let housekeepers know what needs to be replaced or reset) to revenue management (software can crunch through data, both current and historic, to set a room rate) and even reservations (booking engines will help a guest determine which room to stay in and which price they would mostly like pay.)
But the question remains: Is all this artificial intelligence absolutely necessary? Ben Rafter, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based OLS Hotels & Resorts, a hotel management company, said artificial intelligence might be more pertinent for hotels in five or 10 years, but for right now, it’s just nice to have.
“If we can use technology to know what a guest wants before she knows she wants it, then we’ve succeeded. Until then, these things are just experimentation with new technology that really don’t provide anything other than an alternative vehicle to doing something for a guest. Usually with more guest dissatisfaction,” he said.
Rafter said his company is testing an Alexa-like device at Hotel Renew in Honolulu, but instead of the device spitting out answers or recommendations that anyone with a phone can Google, this device will offer up custom, localized content developed by either the hotel’s employees or local experts.
“All of our investments should be geared towards better personalization and tools that can deliver it,” he said.
For other hoteliers wondering if they should make the leap into AI, Rafter says think again.
“If you want to invest in one thing, forget AI. Invest in plumbing,” he said referring to the hotel’s Wi-Fi infrastructure, preferably one with large amounts of bandwidth.