Amazon made a special version of Alexa for hotels with Echo speakers in their rooms

guest · Jun 19, 2018

Amazon made a special version of Alexa for hotels with Echo speakers in their rooms
Order room service, request housekeeping, or play some tunes
June 19, 2018
https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/19/17476688/amazon-alexa-for-hospitality-announced-hotels-echo

Marriott International plans to integrate Alexa for Hospitality at select Marriott Hotels, Westin Hotels & Resorts, St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, Aloft Hotels, and Autograph Collection Hotels starting this summer.

The Alexa experience will be customized and tailored to each individual hospitality location, so guests will be able to do things like order room service, request a housekeeping visit, or adjust room controls (thermostat, blinds, lights, etc.) using an Echo in their room.

But do you want an Echo in your hotel room? Would you trust it? Would you keep it on mute? Or would you unplug it entirely? [...]

Amazon says that “soon,” users will be able to temporarily link their own Amazon account with Echos that are running Alexa for Hospitality. That way you’ll have access to your music subscription from Amazon Music or Spotify or your audiobooks from Audible.
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Are they automatically cleared? Can the hotel or business access them afterward? The answers are at least somewhat reassuring.

Recordings of Alexa commands are deleted daily.

Hotels are not given access to voice recordings of Alexa interactions. Nor are they able to review Alexa’s responses to users.

Hotels can use Alexa for Hospitality to “measure engagement through analytics” or “customize the deployment” by choosing default music stations from iHeartRadio or connecting custom skills to their Echo devices. Amazon’s example of the latter is Marriott offering TED Talks on Echo devices at its locations.

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mirimir · Jun 19, 2018

Hey, Alexa is your friend

guest · Jun 20, 2018

Alexa is not a "requirement". Hotel guests can make a request to remove the device from their room (mentioned in a different article):

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...r-room-service-control-in-room-smart-devices/
Update, 10:31am ET: According to an Amazon representative, hotel guests can request for the Echo device to be removed from their room if they do not want to make use of Alexa during their stay.
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guest · Jun 21, 2018

With Echo in Hotel Rooms, Amazon Can Now Track Your Travel Habits
Amazon (and hotels) now have the option to collect new forms of data from people.
June 21, 2018
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbqk4x/amazon-echo-alexa-hotel-room

Amazon has now found a way directly into the hotel room—a rare coup. The only other businesses that have had the ability to track customers in their hotel rooms have been those providing the television/cable, Internet connection, and the minibar. By joining these service providers, Amazon (and hotels) now have the option to collect new forms of data from people.

For Amazon, this expands its scope from collecting shopping, reading, and viewing habits to include travel information and hotel room requests. [...] To some extent, surveillance in hotels has been increasing as new technology has become available.

For business customers, having a sense of “home away from home” via Amazon, might make all the difference in familiarity and comfort for a busy or lonely business traveller. For leisure customers, depending upon brand, Alexa in the room could be an unwelcome device. [...]
Amazon may be offering convenience, but this will come with some price, either our privacy, our habits and patterns being scraped—or, our pleasure centers so stimulated, that we don’t want to go anywhere Amazon is not.
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mirimir · Jun 21, 2018

But not in EU, right? Or at least, not without GDPR compliance.

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Amazon made a special version of Alexa for hotels with Echo speakers in their rooms

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