The rapid development and growth of Artificial Intelligence, NLP (Natural Language Processing) and Machine Learning has empowered voice technology. With voice assistants entering our everyday lives at a blistering speed, they are making major waves in the hospitality landscape. Tech leaders such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft have upgraded their amazing and interactive voice assistants in a way to enhance guest experiences.
Encompassing the advantages that voice technologies offer, there has been a sharp rise in its adoption amongst the people. According to research, about 3.25 billion voice assistants are in use today and there will be 8 billion digital voice assistants in use by 2023. As people are already familiar with the technology, the growing rate of adoption certainly makes it more appealing for hoteliers. Voice being a natural interface, its integration with smart speakers has therefore led to many advantages for hoteliers. Here are 5 amazing ways voice assistants can benefit the hospitality industry:
1. High-tech Guest Experiences
With the rising demands of modern consumers, voice assistants can fulfill their high-tech needs quite easily. As customer experience is the heart of hospitality, a customer’s vacation should thus be even more convenient than his regular life would be.
The high-tech benefits of voice assistants can be endless, ranging from controlling guestroom’s lights and temperature to integrating it with valet and safety systems at hotels. Moreover, guest experiences can even be personalized due to the flexibility that these voice assistants offer. For example, if you have a group coming in for a contest or auditions, you can have pre-recorded messages for all the participants wishing them all the best and so on. Hence voice interfaces can create truly memorable and personalized guest experiences.
2. Ease in Operations and Time Management
You can now hand over the majority of front desk tasks and concierge duties to a voice assistant. It can be a great addition to your hotel staff for automating day-to-day hotel operations. For example, voice assistants can help in notifying the front desk if a guest requires anything or is having a problem of a leaking tap. This saves a lot of time of staff members while responding to telephone calls and coordinating among themselves. As a result, the hotel staff can be utilized in a more productive manner.
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3. Actionable Insights and Feedback
Guests are generally reluctant in providing reviews and feedbacks of their stay or staff services. The reasons for doing so could be anything such as a shortage of time or lack of motivation. In such situations, we usually tend to speak rather than write feedback of two-three lines. Here’s when voice assistants come into the role and help in collecting valuable feedback and areas of improvement from the guests. With voice assistants installed in a hotel room, guests can be encouraged to talk to them and comment honestly sitting their room and without facing any front desk employee. This information can be vitally utilized and analyzed to improve your hotel offerings.
4. 24/7 Guest Support
There are instances when guests require assistance at odd hours of the day and when the staff doesn't respond to their needs, it becomes a really frustrating experience. To avoid such kind of situations, voice assistants play a very major role. They do not have any off days or sick leaves to hinder guest experiences at any moment. If a guest is feeling too cold or too warm, rather than fiddling with instruments they just have to command their in-room smart speaker. Thus, the need for night staff support can be eliminated to a greater extent with voice technology.
5. Eradicate Language Barriers
People often find it difficult to communicate in an international language, while traveling abroad. And it becomes even more difficult when they encounter their hotel staff members who do not have the knowledge of the native language that guests are speaking. So what’s the solution? A voice assistant integrated with automatic translation can be enabled to answer questions of guests, in their own native language or in a language they are comfortable speaking. For example, Google assistant is compatible with 27 different languages and is still working on more. Thus, eliminating language barriers can unequivocally lead to elevating guest experiences during the stay.
A number of hotels and chains are now adopting voice technology. As voice-enabled assistants are rapidly becoming a staple in people’s home, they can be easily incorporated in guests’ lifestyles too. As a consequence, many hospitality leaders are fulfilling modern customer expectations by transforming into intelligent hotels. Voice technology is proving to be a great asset to the hospitality industry and will become mainstream in the coming years.