Amazon.com said on Tuesday that it has partnered with Marriott International Inc to help increase guest access to amenities with Alexa, through its voice-controlled device Echo.
The company announced Alexa for Hospitality, a new experience offered by invitation to hoteliers that bring Alexa to hotels, vacation rentals, and other hospitality locations. Using the Amazon Echo in their room, guests can now ask Alexa for hotel information, contact the hotel to request guest services, play music in their room and more.
With Alexa for Hospitality, hospitality providers can enable and customize a range of voice-first features based on their guests' needs. Using an Amazon Echo in their room, guests can ask Alexa for information like pool hours or fitness center location, request hotel services like room service or housekeeping, call the concierge, and more. Alexa can also be configured by hospitality providers to allow guests to control and adjust in-room devices like lights, thermostats, blinds, and TVs to their individual preferences or ask Alexa to play music from services including iHeartRadio and TuneIn. Guests can also be given access to Alexa skills to check airport wait times, play games, get in a quick guided workout, play white noise to help them fall asleep, and more.
Hospitality providers will also have the option to allow their guests to personalize their Alexa in-room experience. Soon, Alexa for Hospitality will support the ability for Amazon customers to temporarily connect their Amazon account to the Alexa-enabled device in their room. Once connected, guests will be able to play their personal music from services including Amazon Music, Spotify, and Pandora; and listen to audiobooks with Audible. When a guest checks out, Alexa for Hospitality automatically disconnects their Amazon account from the in-room device.
The company said the partnership will start this summer at Marriott's select properties and the service will be available by invitation to other hotel chains.
It has been also reported that Marriott had tested both Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa to select what was best suited for its hotels.