Siri conversations with hotel rooms
Want to raise the temperature in your room? Turn out the bathroom light?
It’s easy now with Siri.
Over Starwood’s tech-centric hotel brand, Aloft, people can talk to their rooms using Apple’s voice-powered assistant Siri.
It’s all part of the hotel’s “Project Jetson”
Now that might seem a bit excessive and over the top. Some might find it too creepy and futuristic.
But according to Aloft’s Global Brand Manager, Eric Marlo, it’s about making rooms more intuitive, fitting in with the customer.
Right now, he is working on creating smart floor sensors that can turn on the bathroom light when you get out of bed at night or alert room service to pick up the used tray you left outside.
“We love to be on the cutting edge of everything,” Marlo told Bloomberg.
“We truly operate like a startup, throwing a lot of ideas at the wall to see what sticks.”
Marlo says the pilot version of Project Jetson is just stage one of things to come.
“We literally launched these [Siri-powered] rooms on Wednesday and we’re already thinking about generations two and three,” he told Bloomberg.
He describes it as “the world’s first voice-activated guest rooms.”
The technology is integrated with a room’s thermostat, sound system, and lighting..
He says it is also “tapped into local areas from a GPS perspective.”
By the time Project Jetson 2.0 is up and running, people will be able to control their entire room just by speaking into their iPhone.
And it won’t be limited to light and temperature either.
Using Siri, people will be able to place a Refuel order (that’s Aloft’s code for room service).
They can also program pre-set preferences, or “triggers” that would just be there automatically during the day.
And potentially, it can even be extended to people’s homes. “It really becomes this living and breathing thing. As technology continues to develop, we can continue to build this out,” Marlo said.
by Leon Gettler, September 1st 2016
