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Voice, including rollout of hotel-driven Alexa, dominates at HITEC

“Voice” was on everyone’s lips at this year’s HITEC, the annual hospitality tech show hosted by HFTP.

Though it wasn’t officially rolled out at the Houston convention, Amazon’s announcement Tuesday of an Alexa for Hospitality certainly was timed to grab the attention of convention-goers.

(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

Having an Echo Dot in a hotel room is nothing new, but according to Amazon’s release, the company’s new product will be hardwired to allow guests to ask Alexa for hotel information, contact the hotel to request guest services and play music in their room, among other property-driven commands. 

Marriott International will be the first to test the product, offering it at select properties in Marriott Hotels, Westin Hotels & Resorts, St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, Aloft Hotels, and Autograph Collection Hotels starting this summer.

Talking about voice

Alexa aside, HITEC hospitality companies and vendors alike were highly tuned into the current potential of voice-activated devices at the property level, from voice-driven smart TVs and remote controls to the voice tech itself, which, according to one major player in that realm, is headed firmly and swiftly towards voice recognition. That means that in the next year, a guest may walk into a hotel room and speak to a device that will immediately recognize her voice and instantly pull up her account and personal preferences.

Equal parts terrifying and exciting. Keep your eye squarely on the not-so-distant future.

Even the executives at Tuesday morning’s C-Suite panel acknowledged the power they predict voice yielding in the coming months and years.

In addition to voice, data – and its effective management using technology – made up the majority of the panel’s focus.

“I see a lot of things broken, but it’s not just systemic to the organizations that we are pursuing,” said Ash Kapur, chief revenue officer and SVP of asset management at Starwood Capital Group.

“I see it across the technology landscape for hotels. We’ve somehow managed to band-aid our technology as things have progressed, which is a problem and also an opportunity for us,” Kapur continued.

C-Suite panel at HITEC Tuesday. (From left: Michael Levie, Citizen M; Mark Carrier, B. F. Saul Company Hospitality Group; Barry Goldstein, Wyndham; Ash Kapur, Starwood Capital Group
C-Suite panel at HITEC Tuesday. (From left: Michael Levie, Citizen M; Mark Carrier, B. F. Saul Company Hospitality Group; Barry Goldstein, Wyndham; Ash Kapur, Starwood Capital Group

The strong desire to have technology match and fill the needs of the guest was also a theme.

And who will pay for all this necessary tech going forward? Mark Carrier, senior officer at B. F. Saul Company Hospitality Group, had some thoughts.

“Well, as I always say, the owner ends up paying for everything eventually, right? That’s how it works. But from my perspective, the brands owe leadership to their franchise communities, because they have the scale, mass, infrastructure to innovate in a way that — I mean, keep in mind, 65% of hotels in the Americas are small businesses. They are not big companies,” he said. 

And in the end, there’s really no one size fits all. Having an Amazon Alexa doesn’t necessarily mean ditching all your good old-fashioned analogue in-room phones. Different age groups and demographics have different needs, and the future, should hotel companies choose to see it, means a multi-faceted approach to using tech smart.

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