LEGOLAND’s New Pirate Hotel Brings Voice AI Awesomeness to Guests with Amazon’s Alexa for Hospitality
In a recent blog post, Amazon announced that its Alexa technology is the centerpiece in a new, next-generation experience at LEGOLAND's new pirate hotel, with the property’s resources and information simply a voice request away. In today’s world, a touch-free experience adds value and helps brings peace of mind to a property and its guests. According to a national survey commissioned by the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA), 85% of guests feel safer at hotels that use technology to reduce direct contact. Adding Alexa to guest rooms can provide hands-free control of TV remotes, music, alarms, in-room guest directory, and more. Alexa for Hospitality also provides customized immersive experiences at the Pirate Island Hotel including a LEGOLAND radio station, a pirate-narrated bedtime story, pirate jokes, and even an in-room treasure hunt with clues specific to each room.
“The guest room experience with Alexa is so unique and immersive, it will drive repeat visitors," said Kevin Carr, Hotels Director at LEGOLAND Resorts Florida. "This is priceless.”
Improving Property Productivity
“By making information more accessible to the guests in a touch-free and convenient way, we feel we have a better way to capture on-property opportunities," said James Barton, Global Head of Business Transformation, Merlin Entertainments, parent company of LEGOLAND Parks. "A good example would be, how we've used Alexa to replace that traditional in room guest directory. We've built all of that kind of intuitiveness and the responses into Alexa. And by the way, would you like to place an order? Would you like to reserve a table? Alexa can take care of that for you.
The convenience and ease of using voice is natural and intuitive for guests. At the same time, Alexa enables hotel staff to focus on more high impact areas by creating greater efficiencies with resource consuming activities such as, check-in and check-out, maintenance service requests, routine enquiries such as pool hours or restaurant locations, and much more. With the complete automation and integration with back-of-house software, Alexa for Hospitality allows the property to continuously improve its guest experiences.
“We can leverage technology to drive new operating efficiencies while also enhancing the sleep over experience," says James Barton, Global Head of Business Transformation, Merlin Entertainments, parent company of LEGOLAND Parks. "Alexa has enabled us to process those service requests in a more seamless way, automate those service requests so that they're finding their way to the appropriate member of staff for fulfillment without the need for walkie-talkies or picking up the phones and calling other departments. That's all automated. That's all happening kind of in the background. It’s getting the guests what they need to really just be able to focus on enjoying their stay and having a good time.”
Alexa Capabilities at Scale
Alexa for Hospitality enables properties to deploy Alexa capabilities at scale. You can easily provision thousands of devices, enable Alexa skills, and create customized guest experiences. “Alexa for Hospitality offers properties a management suite with APIs to manage voice immersive experiences and quickly integrate Alexa into their systems,” said Jeff Thompson, Founder of Net Tech Inc., the solution provider responsible for deploying Alexa for Hospitality at LEGOLAND’s new Pirate Island Hotel. “This simplifies deployment and management of devices at properties saving us hundreds of setup and management hours.”