Future Technology and New Normal in Hospitality: Voice Takeover

2020 is being a harsh year so far. Ongoing pandemic has strongly influenced and changed our lives, our daily activities and set a strong question mark on our plans.

At some critical point, governments closed their borders and went into lockdown, forbade travelling, etc. All in an effort to handle the unwanted and unpredicted situation.

Hospitality is among several industries which are experiencing the most severe impact. Lockdown and social distancing automatically resulted in many hotels closing, employees being furloughed or in worse case laid off.  

This was a case or still is a case in some countries but recently hospitality started to bounce back. Borders are opened once again, travelling is not prohibited anymore, hotels are reopening. We are still not in the place where we used to be, but with extra caution and social distancing, we can slowly move on.

What has changed? 

Most hotels are open again, but with a much less guest that stays daily. Health has naturally become a top priority and hotels are trying to do their best to ensure guests are being safe.

There are many new approaches and procedures which influence guest’s choice of hotel that he will use. Rooms are being disinfected in between different guests, tables in restaurants are being more distanced, employees and guests have an entire group of conduct guidelines, disinfectants are available on every corner, etc.

What more can we do? 

Also, there is a lot of technology which, eventually, could enhance safety. Body temperature cameras, alarming staff in case a person with high body temperature enters, or special stations on entrances forcing every person to walk through a disinfection process, but there aren't so many solutions which can boost guestroom safety.

As mentioned earlier, there are new cleaning procedures including the disinfection of surfaces or fixtures people will usually touch. This also adds extra work to the cleaning staff.

If you want to reduce the number of switches being touched and keep room functionality, you could think about voice-controlled solutions. Voice-controlled solutions are already a part of plenty of various industries and they are usually being used to enhance efficiency.

The integration between INTEREL and several 3rd party voice control solutions allows hotels to offer guests an experience more like what they have come to expect at home. Voice controls combined with INTEREL’s advanced guest room management and Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure creates more intuitive and frictionless ways for guests to interact with the hotel room environment. This kind of solutions is usually simple and intuitive for guests to use and very future-oriented at the same time.

This means the system is designed to listen to guests, resulting in that simple statements like: “Turn on the bedroom light,” “I’m cold”, or “Open curtains” are enough to adjust the room, accordingly, making guests feel safer and more comfortable. Interel’s room control solutions, including light switches, thermostats, and more, are especially purpose-built for hospitality and integrated with voice control to elegantly and seamlessly place control of the room directly into the guests’ hands – or voice.  

If you want to know more about hospitality voice controls, feel free to get in touch with us.