Thanks to the advancements in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing (NLP), voice technology is being adopted by more and more people across the globe. Mobile users are increasingly using voice searches to find information, discover new things, and for search queries. It is no wonder that 20% of mobile Google searches are done through Voice. By 2019, the voice recognition market will be a $601 million industry, as per a report from Technavio via Skyword.
With 60.5 million people in the US depending on voice based digital assistants, the potential is definitely there for businesses to embrace voice based tech in developing custom offerings to their customers. Out of the different options available (Siri, Cortana, and Alexa), Amazon Alexa is emerging as a dominant voice search technology that is loved by both businesses as well as by end consumers.
The market leadership position of Alexa
Amazon has been placing great importance on voice technology in all its communication medium. Its popular mass market devices like Echo, Echo Dot and Fire Stick all come bundled with voice search capabilities. This is in line with shifting user preferences and newer business avenues for the businesses to leverage voice search to its full potential.
As a result, Alexa has spread its wings to benefit multiple industries. Be it retail, automotive, healthcare, or hospitality, Alexa has been providing immense ROI to businesses across diverse industry sectors.
Today, we will have a look at how Alexa is creating a tangible impact on specifically the hospitality industry.
How it is helping hospitality industry?
Right from the first interaction through hotel greeting till the guest checkout, the hospitality industry can make use of AI based voice interaction to elevate the degree of user delight that the hotel guest experiences. Here are some ways in which this can be done.
1. Welcome the guest personally
Hotels can put Amazon Echo devices in the guest room for welcome and give introduction of hotel and their facilities available for guest. Some big hotel brands, are using Alexa with Artificial Intelligence.
Take for instance, Glasgow based Village Hotels. They are installing Amazon Echo in every guest room. This in-house virtual assistant can come in handy for a variety of queries that a guest may have – right from knowing about the swimming pool opening times, to getting directions to the spa inside the hotel.
2. Place Alexa Enabled Device In a Room
Amazon Alexa takes hospitality convenience and comfort to the next level for the guest. The device helps the guest with various in-room services. Without getting out of their bed, they can shut the light off or on, adjust room temperature, or switch on the television. It also helps the guest to control room environment just by using his or her voice without using any kind of gesture.
3. Alexa makes communication easier for staff and guest.
Alexa not only helps the guest to get settled in their rooms but also assists the staff to work more efficiently. Just by speech, the guest in the room can ask Alexa to clean the room or do their laundry. This will help staff to do their work in a faster way, serve more rooms, and accomplish their work in a productive manner.
4. Seamless services made possible
Amazon Alexa Skills can bring proximity and speed for service response. The guest can avoid listening to a phone ring and waiting on hold for an operator or for a response to their queries. It also gives quick and easy access for the guest to staff personnel within the hotel, so that the staff can provide best services and in prompt time. All miscommunications in human interaction can be avoided, and quick and relevant services can be provided right when the guests need it.
5. Personalized Advertising made effective
Alexa can help the hotel to update the guests about special offers and services. When customers are able to achieve these offers and deals at the right time they highly appreciate the personalized level of thinking applied by the hotel to its patrons.
This improves the overall user experience up by several notches. Hotels can do online marketing, collect feedback and get actionable insight to improve the services, which will help the guest to use the services and revisit hotel.
To sign off
The advances in AI and NLP have reached to a stage where Voice Bots have become a reality and no more looked as tech toys. With the impact of voice based tech pervading multiple industries, it finds amazing potential to improve the overall stay experience for a hospitality guest.
This is not surprising considering that in less than 4 years, Voice is projected to drive $11.7 billion in sales. You too need to adopt voice to get a competitive edge. Get on-board a reliable technology partner like Pragmatic Techsoft to turn your voice tech blueprint for your hotels into a successful reality.
