Time.news – Who doesn’t want an assistant in a hotel who is ready in an instant a have the toothbrush forgotten at home delivered to the room or to send a maintainer in a hurry if the air conditioning is acting up? But who would want an indiscreet ear that listens to everything that happens and is said in that room?
The dichotomy between service efficiency and privacy protection is what has so far kept home automation away from hotels, with the never dormant debate on how much we are willing to give up our privacy in exchange for cheap or even free services.
Attempting to overcome the impasse is the understanding that Amazon offers to the hotel world with the launch of Alexa Smart Properties for Hospitality arriving in Italy after being tested in France and the United Kingdom.
It is the solution that Amazon has developed to allow guests of hotels, resorts and B&Bs to use the voice assistant as a virtual concierge allowing guests, but especially the hotel, to simplify some activities.
Alexa in hotel
Guests can ask to play music, get weather information, and check out, but the advantage is above all for the managers who calculated an average time savings of an hour and a half a day at work. In what? In the availability of the rooms, for example. “The staff now use a paper register which they then deliver to the management to indicate which rooms have been redone and are ready for the next guests: a slow and fallacious system” says Giammaria Visconti, Alexa country manager, “thanks to Alexa the staff just need to say that the room is ready and enter your password e the information becomes available to the front desk in real time“.
Beyond the features for guests who will be able to access information such as the Wi-Fi password, the opening hours of the restaurant, bar or gym or request hotel services and report a maintenance problem, who really benefits in this project? “There are three players in the field” continues Visconti, “Amazon Alexa, a service provider that creates a personalized console and the hotel. Amazon earns with a rate that the accommodation facility pays by subscription”.
So, no ‘payment in data’. “Nothing is recorded” assures Visconti, “only a note of the requests made is taken, to optimize the work. The Alexa Echo camera is deactivated by default and the microphone can be switched off by customers. Privacy protection is maximum and the saving in terms of time is considerable: just think of a request that goes directly to the maintenance technician without having to go through the front desk”. A note of color: among the 13 thousand requests made in a month of ‘testing’ Alexa in the TH Carpegna Palace Hotel in Rome is, needless to say: “What is the Wi-Fi password?”.
Two Italian companies certified by Amazon to customize consoles for hotels: Navoo and Zucchetti Hospitality.