Already managing more than 20,000 voice assistant solutions at over 400 locations, Volara now launches Uniguest’s voice technology division positioning the company to bring voice-based contactless engagement technology solutions to hospitality, senior living communities, stadiums, banks, and other industries.

Volara’s highly secure and deeply integrated platform is used by property managers, creative agencies, and technology integrators to enable customers to request items and services such as extra towels, turndown services, or in-room dining, enjoy entertainment, hear recommendations for nearby attractions, and access many other unique on brand voice-based experiences.

Often utilized via the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, Volara’s solutions are hardware and platform agnostic making it a popular choice for third-party integrators. Volara’s software and infrastructure ensure the protection of guest privacy and the security of its clients’ data. Additionally, Volara is an authorized solution provider for Google Assistant’s Interpreter mode, enabling 29-language translation across commercial locations including airports, stadiums, retail outlets, banks, and hotels.

“We are very excited to add Volara to the Uniguest suite of solutions, especially since it fits so well across the key industries our brands operate in,” Uniguest CEO Jeff Hiscox said. “Voice creates contactless experiences, and we see it has a big part in future technology, and by offering a secure and functional software like Volara’s, we expect to see high adoption rates from current and new customers alike.”

Volara founder and CEO Dave Berger will stay with Uniguest after the acquisition as EVP, Volara, Uniguest’s Voice division. “In early 2016, we envisioned voice-first technologies managing customer relationships across many commercial properties. With that aim we focused on three requirements: robust customer privacy protections, impenetrable security of client data, and seamless integrations into the technology ecosystem of each vertical where our solutions were engaged. Today, as the leading voice assistant solution for hotels and senior living communities, I’m excited to accelerate our growth in both our existing and new verticals as part of Uniguest.”

This announcement is the latest in a series of acquisitions made by Uniguest. The company acquired JANUS Displays, a hospitality-focused digital signage company in February of this year, Sagely, a senior living software technology provider in May, and UCView, an IPTV and digital signage provider in September.

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With the help of Google Assistant, guests are saying things like “Hey Google, call the front desk,” “Hey Google, bring me fresh towels,” “Hey Google, set a LEGO^® alarm,” “Hey Google, tell me about the theme park,” or “Hey Google, can you recommend a place for breakfast?” and receiving answers immediately. They are inquiring about the poolside cabanas, birthday party packages, restaurant recommendations and directions to the airport. They are taking video tours of the LEGOLAND® theme parks before venturing out, so they know exactly where their favorite rides are located. They are watching their favorite creators on YouTube, listening to their favorite songs on YouTube Music, and connecting their personal mobile devices via Bluetooth to play their own music playlists through the symphonic speaker on the Google Nest Hub.

“The pandemic has changed the way people travel,” said Volara CEO David Berger. “As leisure travel continues to pick up dramatically, travelers are choosing hotels that are taking their health and the guest experience seriously. Forward-thinking companies like Merlin Entertainments are implementing innovative technologies that provide for a safe and rich guest experience at LEGOLAND^® Hotels and Resorts. Leveraging Volara’s private and secure conversation management software that sits atop the Google Nest Hub, Merlin Entertainments is optimizing the way people enjoy their hotels and theme parks across the globe.”

Utilization of Nest Hubs with Volara has reimagined the in-room guest experience, even eliminating the need for high-touch items like bedside alarm clocks and telephones.

• 76.8% of Nest Hub devices with Volara at LEGOLAND^® Hotels are used each day.
• 67.47% of those devices at LEGOLAND^® Hotels that are engaged once are used three or more times per day.
• 25.38% of those devices at LEGOLAND^® Hotels are used 13+ times each day.
• An average of ten hours of staff time are saved every day due to the automation of greetings, recommendations, and information sharing, as well as item and service requests by the Nest Hubs with Volara.

“We expected guests would use the solution for those utility functions every guest needs — from calling the front desk to alarms to requesting the information traditionally found in a guest services directory. What surprised us was that there have been so many power users,” Berger said. “Approximately two thirds of engaged devices are used more than three times per day, while approximately one quarter of all devices are being used 13 or more times per day. That’s a lot of guests having a lot of fun!”

While convenience is important, Merlin Entertainments is also committed to protecting guests’ privacy. LEGOLAND^® Hotel guests are not required to sign into the Google Nest Hub device, and no activity is linked to guests’ personal accounts. Google Nest Hub is not equipped with a camera and the physical privacy switch on the device turns off the microphone. No audio is ever stored, and all activities are immediately wiped from the device when it is reset for the next guest.

Voice AI Driving Engagement

James Barton, Group Head of Business Transformation, Hotels at Merlin Entertainments, said people today want to feel safe when traveling. Under Barton’s leadership, LEGOLAND^® Hotels are focused on giving guests the tools they need to reach out to management on their own terms — and he is seeing a preference for voice AI.

“Over the last nine years, the LEGOLAND^® brand has grown exponentially because we are creating one-of-a-kind, immersive experiences that travelers appreciate,” Barton said. “As we continue to combat the disruption brought on by the pandemic, our partnership with companies like Volara and Google is helping us remain strong and better serve our customers.

“LEGOLAND Hotel at LEGOLAND^® New York Resort, for example, opened without any telephones in the guestrooms. Guests will find the Nest Hubs with Volara to be an intuitive means of engaging with the hotel staff and services,” he said. “Instead of picking up the phone when guests need something, they just ask Google. The device is not only providing entertainment and satisfaction, but it is driving service optimization. Volara’s integration is helping us fulfill service requests more rapidly and providing us with actionable business intelligence to help us make data-driven decisions. If we see a spike in guests asking Google for more blankets, for example, we can start putting extra blankets in all rooms when the weather starts changing to cut back on service calls.”

Volara has also been providing LEGOLAND^® Hotels an exciting way to extend the theme park experience to guestrooms, Barton said. Families can say “Hey Google, tell me a bedtime story.” Then, read in the voice of a LEGOLAND^® character, the child is taken on an immersive adventure. Each room at LEGOLAND^® Hotels also features a treasure chest filled with LEGO^® treasure. Families can then interact with Google and set out on an in-room treasure hunt just by asking, “Hey Google, what’s my next clue?”

“We believe that if we can create the right experiences and make the sleepover memorable, then guests will be back,” Barton said. “Voice AI in rooms through Volara and Google is opening a whole world of opportunity to operators like us and it’s creating experiences that today’s travelers are craving.”

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Guests can speak service requests to an in-room Volara-powered Google Nest Hub or an Amazon Echo voice assistant to avoid physical contact with staff or other in-room equipment (such as the bedside phone, TV remote, or tablet). Then, the voice request will be captured by GuestHub, a ticket will be created within the system, and the request will be routed to the proper department for fulfillment, ensuring safer engagement and a truly contactless experience.

“One of the fastest ways that we can rebuild confidence that hotels are safe is to ensure travelers that they can have a truly contactless hotel experience,” said Carlos Vollbracht, product owner of GuestHub by Norelian LLC. “There is no better way to do this than integrating Volara’s highly secure voice technology with our guest-experience management solution. How reassuring is it to know that if I am hungry or thirsty, I don’t have to brave the lobby bar or restaurant, I can just see the menu on my device and ask Google or Alexa to bring me a cheeseburger”.

“This type of contactless voice experience would make any traveler very happy today,” Vollbracht said. “Happy guests mean good reviews. Good reviews boost a hotel’s satisfaction rating. A higher star rating means a hotel can charge higher average daily rates. Our goal at GuestHub is to help hotels get better reviews, make more money for their rooms, and ultimately get people traveling again knowing that there is technology in place to make their stays exceptional and safe. Our partnership with Volara is taking our customers one step closer to making that happen.”

Volara provides platform agnostic voice-based conversation management software and a secure integrations hub to existing property technologies. Its software turns the major natural language processing platforms into a business tool that drives more efficient customer service. The architecture of Volara’s software ensures that recordings of guests are never associated with their personally identifiable information and that guests’ personally identifiable information is not released to the major voice technology platforms where it could be used for targeted remarketing or other commercial activities. Volara also protects hotels’ proprietary data from disclosure. Its secure integrations hub enables hotels to have the benefit of the voice technologies from the leading providers of natural language processing while protecting a hotels’ proprietary data from these platforms.

According to Voicebot, nearly 90 million U.S. adults have smart speakers, exceeding one-third of consumers.  Statista projects the number of U.S. smart speaker buyers to reach almost 23.5 million in 2021.  This wide scale consumer adoption is a leading indicator of guest demand, as travelers expect the comforts of home in their hotel rooms.

In the hotel environment, guest adoption rates of voice assistants powered and deployed by Volara are climbing, with 68 percent of weekday guests and 83 percent of weekend guests engaging by voice. More than 30 percent of all service requests at voice enabled hotels are being made through the in-room voice assistant, which in turn communicates with housekeeping, engineering, and operations systems to deliver more efficient service and improve guest satisfaction. When travel resumes to full capacity post pandemic, those numbers are expected to rise dramatically, as more and more travelers will be used to and expect a contactless experience.

“We are delighted to be working with GuestHub to bring on-command functionality to their customers,” said Volara CEO David Berger. “The hospitality industry is not just facing a health crisis; it is facing a confidence crisis. By combining voice and guest experience technologies, we are quickly changing the service culture at hotels by providing solutions that ensure staff and guests safety — eliminating the need for face-to-face interactions all while enhancing service and operational efficiency. We look forward to bringing Volara powered voice assistants to GuestHub customers.”

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Volara’s integration into the hotel’s operations platform from ALICE drives additional efficiencies, as all item and service requests are seamlessly routed to the appropriate department for fulfillment of each command. Whether guests request an item (“Hey Google, bring a bottle of champagne”), schedule a service (“Hey Google, bring my car around front”), seek recommendations (“Hey Google, where I can get a good steak?”) or just need to know how to access a hotel amenity (“Hey Google, how do I connect to the WiFi?”), the highly-secure privacy-centric voice technology will streamline all guest communication and give visitors a way to connect virtually to those who will make their stays exceptional.

“When guests return, everyone who walks through our doors will have an extraordinary stay,” said Gale South Beach General Manager Kevin Waldstein. “Being closed since March, we’ve used the downtime to invest in tools and technologies that will ensure a clean, sanitary, and contactless environment; adding that the solution from Google and Volara was the first step in our contactless initiative, and guests will be blown away by the convenience. With people quarantined at home for so many months, they’ve become familiar and comfortable with smart speakers. It’s exciting that we have that same type of voice-on-command experience at The Gale — and soon at our sister hotel the Shelborne South Beach will add Volara to ensure consistency across the Menin Hospitality portfolio. We can’t wait to see people engaging with Volara. It will surely drive them to connect with our staff and benefit from our services while remaining safe and socially distant.”

Volara provides platform agnostic voice-based conversation-management software and a secure integrations hub for existing hospitality technologies. Its software turns the major natural language processing platforms into a business tool that drives more efficient customer service, influences guests’ behavior, improves net promoter scores and helps hospitality providers understand travelers better.

Volara’s software is enabling the hotel to manage conversations with its guests in real-time. Its secure integrations hub, which now includes 40+ hotel technologies, is enabling guests’ requests to prompt specific actions – whether routing a task to hotel staff, turning off the lights, or putting on the air conditioning. Volara’s software also enables additional layers of security to ensure that guests’ privacy is protected, and proprietary hotel data is secure. Volara is the only provider of voice-based solutions to the hospitality industry that has the Alexa for Business Service Delivery Designation from Amazon, is a launch partner of Alexa for Hospitality, and is an authorized solution provider for the Google Assistant Interpreter Mode and Google’s Hotel Solutions.

“Even before COVID-19, hotels were embracing voice technology as a means of engaging guests,” said David Berger, Volara CEO. “Today, with contactless service becoming the norm, people are getting more accustomed to having their needs met with little to no personal interaction. Guests who are constantly asking Siri or Google or Alexa  questions while at home, can now expect to have an even better more tailored on-command experience while in their hotel rooms.

“As a technology-forward hotel company, Menin Hospitality is anticipating its guests’ needs and doing everything possible today to elevate the touchless travel experience of tomorrow, starting with voice,” he added. “The Gale and Shelborne are ready, willing, and able to greet guests and keep them engaged in a way that only Volara can. We are delighted to add Menin Hospitality to our client portfolio, and we look forward to working with them on even more deployments soon.”

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Guests can access a range of entertainment, information, recommendations, and services just by speaking in their room:

“Hey Google, tell me about the hotel’s health and safety policies.”

“Hey Google, can you recommend a place to take my kids?”

“Hey Google, bring me a toothbrush.”

“Hey Google, play Peppa Pig.”

“Hey Google, listen to Lady Gaga.”

“Hey Google, set an alarm for 7:00 a.m.”

“We are thrilled to partner with Google to bring this powerful consumer hardware to hotels,” said David Berger, Volara CEO. “With Google and Volara, hoteliers can reinvent their guest experience while actually reducing costs. The contactless guest engagement and touchless room controls solution replaces the bedside clock, printed guest directory, and Bluetooth speaker. Soon, I expect our solution to displace the telephone and linear television. This popular and easy-to-use voice assistant will give today’s trepidatious travelers the confidence they need to truly enjoy their stay experiences knowing their every request can be met just by speaking in their rooms.

“Together, Volara and Google are significantly raising the bar on hospitality by enabling hoteliers to deliver contactless experiences that support social distancing and enable more efficient operations,” he said. “With the guest journey constantly changing, hoteliers are becoming more reliant on technology to keep guests safe. Google is curating fun and memorable guest experiences while optimizing hotel operations, driving satisfaction and improving loyalty. But don’t just take my word for it.”

Here’s what hoteliers are saying about the globally deployed and proven solution:

“As an early adopter to the Volara product suite, Viceroy Hotel & Resorts is a proud partner of Volara  — the leader in voice-activated technology,” said Viceroy Hotels & Resorts CEO Bill Walshe. “We are even more grateful now to have technology in place to provide contactless hospitality to ensure guests and staff are as safe and comfortable as possible. We are thrilled to introduce the recent iteration of the Google voice assistant powered by Volara at our newest additions to the brand, Viceroy Washington D.C., as well as the forthcoming Hotel Zena, also in D.C., to meet travelers’ demands for touchless room controls and services. With Google undoubtedly a household fixture, we look forward to providing a safe, innovative solution that guests are familiar with when they choose to stay with us.”

“At the Gansevoort Meatpacking we are constantly striving to bring our guests the latest in technology and the most seamless experience possible,” said Anton Moore, General Manager of Gansevoort Meatpacking. “We are thrilled to be working with Volara and Google to offer guests this experience. With this new technology guests can play music, order anything from a bottle of champagne to a set of fresh towels, and even learn more about the neighborhood just by chatting with their Google Nest Hub.”

“We are overjoyed to be a pioneer property of Google’s hotel solution in Miami Beach,” said Kevin Waldstein, General Manager of The Gale South Beach, a Menin Hospitality hotel. “Travelers will be so appreciative that they can talk to staff remotely via the voice assistant without having to pick up the in-room phone or walk down to the front desk. Powered by Volara, this voice solution — with its many integrations to other technologies — makes it so much easier for me to manage tasks and ensure that everyone is following new standard operating procedures. Plus, it will enable our staff to remain socially distant from guests while ensuring their every wish is our command. When we reopen in October, we are confident that when guests check out, they won’t to stop talking about their experience at The Gale — and Google’s hotel solutions will be a big part of our success, as it will truly help us deliver extraordinary service in unprecedented times.”

“Google’s hotel solution provides travelers staying at Synergy corporate housing with an in-room, always available expert stay concierge,” said Rob Eisenberg, General Manager, Synergy New York. “From internal service support commands such as housekeeping and maintenance to tailored restaurant reviews and neighborhood amenities to the typical in-unit IOT between phone, music, T.V., lighting and central air—not to mention the reminders about weather, transit, and personal calendars — Google’s hotel solution benefitting from Volara’s voice-based engagement technology offers our guests the power of the world’s fastest search engine along with specific guest service amenities via the convenience of intuitive voice interface. Google and Volara’s partnership enable endless possibilities for how we deliver our hospitality philosophy.”

Google’s hotel solution benefits from Volara’s real-time conversation management software and secure integrations hub which seamlessly connects the solution to leading hotel technologies, including: Task Management Solutions (Alice, Knowcross, Amadeus / HotSOS, SynergyMMS, GXP, Hmobile, and Nuvola), Energy Management and Room Controls (Interel, Telkonet, Schneider Electric, VDA Group, and coming soon Legrande and Lutron), Interactive Television Solutions (Innspire, SONIFI, BeyondTV, and MCOMs), SMS Guest Engagement (Zingle / Medallia, Kipsu, GoMoment, TrustYou Messaging, and Whistle), Staff Alert Technologies (React Mobile), and more.

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The NEW 2020 hotel experience is smart-speaker centric and it involves connecting these devices to the TV, thermostat, live-streaming radio services and other hotel systems to make the guest experience more natural and like home — actually better than home.

eMarketer predicts that 118 million people will rely on voice assistants this year, with the number growing to 123 million by 2021. Therefore, bringing smart speakers into the guestroom experience to improve communication and efficiencies is just smart business.

Wanting the Viceroy Hotels & Resorts experience to feel like a natural extension of our guests’ daily lives, we made the commitment to go “all in” with voice technology last year. To do this, we had to find a technology partner that was innovative, flexible, customizable and could easily integrate with existing property technologies. It also needed to meet the complex technical specifications of our hotels while simultaneously adhering to our obligation to ensure guest privacy.

While the quest seemed to be a steep challenge, after doing our diligence we were drawn to Volara — as its enterprise grade conversation management software and platform agnostic approach enabled the flexibility and security required by our hotels. Their software was proven out in peer hotels across the globe and the data driving their automated conversation models was informed by voice-based interactions with more than 10 million hotel guests. The aggregated data was central to the solution’s ability to accurately reply to our guests’ complex requests and that made a big difference.  Alexa itself seemed like a good choice given its consumer adoption, but Volara really made it work for the hotel environment.

Success from the Start

Before embarking on our own journey with voice, I was familiar with a few hotels that had tried launching home grown voice programs with limited success. Utilization rates were low, and their ownership was rightly concerned they hadn’t done what was necessary to safeguard their guests’ personally identifiable information. Complaints outnumbered positive reviews and the programs were cancelled before they really got out of the gate.

To the contrary, the conversation-management software and seamless integrations enabling the voice solution at Viceroy Hotels & Resorts creates a hotel business tool atop Alexa. It’s because of this innovative, flexible and customizable technology that we are seeing exceptional utilization rates, delivering an optimal guest experience, driving meaningful efficiencies, and scaling personal — even traditional — hospitality.

Volara’s software had integrations to more than 40 hotel technologies, including interactive television, room controls, PBX, music, and work order-management. Guests staying at our Viceroy L’Ermitage Beverly Hills, for example, are controlling lighting, Do Not Disturb/Make up Room settings, and room temperature through Volara’s integration to INNCOM by Honeywell. They are using their voices to control the TV (from changing channels to adjusting the volume) through integration to Sonifi. They are listening to Viceroy curated playlists or asking Alexa to play their preferred music genre via integration to iHeartRadio.

Nearly all our guests are using the smart speaker to request hotel service information and amenities (from outlet open/close times, directions, and local area attractions to pillows, toothbrushes, minibar refreshments and more). This is possible due to Volara’s connection to the ALICE Hotel Operations Platform. Having these integrations in place made deployment of this highly successful voice program quick and easy.

Ensuring the highest levels of guest privacy and hotel data security was the final piece to our implementation puzzle. Volara ensures that recordings of guests are never associated with their personally identifiable information. All recordings of guests are deleted within 24 hours — a distinct difference from the management of user recordings in the consumer environment. The company also ensures that any hotel technologies that enhance the voice-based experience are securely integrated (meaning, there is no leakage of hotel proprietary data to Amazon itself).

Although my technical diligence confirmed the solution was secure for guest use, we expected that some of our guests may still be skeptical — so together with the Volara team we implemented a guest education process and trained the hotel staff on how to respond to guests questions.

No Risk, Just Reward

Guests are certainly having fun with the Alexa devices. Feedback on review sites and from post-stay surveys has been positive. While satisfaction scores continue to rise, the measurable cost savings have as well. We are seeing a substantial improvement in delivery time for any guest requests through Alexa and guests are enjoying the added convenience of just saying “Alexa, call the front desk” or “Alexa, call the concierge,” to connect with our staff without having to pick up the phone. The easier we make it to connect with staff, the happier our guests will be and the more often they will return.

We’ve been able to increase hotel revenues, reduce labor costs and streamline operations because the integrated voice platform is giving guests instant access to the information and services that are important to them.

Throughout 2020 we will be deploying smart speakers at all Viceroy hotels as we further optimize how our guests are interacting and engaging by voice command. We are in discussions with Volara to develop a service for meeting planners and social groups to use voice commands to control lighting, start video presentations, order food and beverage, and place additional requests from meeting rooms.

We are also brainstorming back-of-house applications to streamline engineering tasks, enable room status changes, and facilitate staff-to-staff communications. Finally, we are researching the viability of interfacing an AI chatbot with Volara to make these voice interactions and experiences more personal for guests and more efficient for operators.

As travel becomes even more data driven, it is foreseeable that a guest could name the qualities they are seeking in an excursion and, based on an algorithm, the smart speaker will recommend more precise detailed recommendations, all with a conversation rather than searching on laptop or mobile. Though guests care about keeping their personal data secure, research shows that many are willing to share proactively if it means a more personalized experience.

The bottom line is this: voice is here to stay. Hoteliers should start to embrace the technology and implement it within their brands immediately if they want to remain competitive. By simply looking at the annual stats, you can see that consumers are using voice daily for everything from search, to information, to room controls within their homes. They love the frictionless experience of voice technologies.

Now that the proper enterprise controls and management features are in place, why not bring this technology within the hotel and interface to key hotel systems to enhance the guest experience?

Darren Clark is VP of Technology for Viceroy Hotels & Resorts. Darren is a technology specialist who has over 20 years of experience in Hospitality IT and emerging technologies. Throughout his career he has worked in a VP role for established hospitality companies such as Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Fairmont Hotels, Andre Balazs Hotels and Standard Hotels International. His career has gained invaluable experience for the luxury, boutique and lifestyle sectors in both the hotel and residential fields. The Viceroy Icon Collection properties include epic hotels and resorts in Los Cabos, Chicago, Beverly Hills, Riviera Maya, Snowmass, and St. Lucia, with forthcoming openings in Serbia, Algarve and Panama. The Viceroy Lifestyle Series hotels and resorts are found in attitude-led destinations such as Santa Monica. The Viceroy Urban Retreats in San Francisco and Washington D.C. have an independent spirit and bold, eccentric personalities. Viceroy Hotels & Resorts is a member of the Global Hotel Alliance (GHA) DISCOVERY, a unique loyalty program offering exclusive benefits and experiences to its members at over 500 hotels around the world.

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To eliminate language barriers and engage more deeply with guests, Google has developed a voice translation technology spanning languages that is now being made available to hotels worldwide through a distribution partnership with Volara. This new feature on the Google Assistant, called interpreter mode, is designed to facilitate real-time translation between two people. This technology can improve the quality of interactions between hotel staff and guests, resulting in better communications and high-value service.

By placing Google Nest Hub devices – provisioned by Volara with enterprise grade management tools and custom branded hotel content – at their front desks or concierge stations, foreign-speaking travelers can speak commands in their native tongue and have those requests translated accurately and in real time.  Text of the conversation will appear on the Google Nest Hub smart display to verify the translation. Not only does this relay to the traveler that his or her business is valued and appreciated, but it starts the stay out on the right foot.

Here are 4 ways that the Google Assistant’s interpreter mode will improve guests’ perceptions of your hotel, boosting satisfaction and loyalty.

Attracting New Travelers

Online consumer reviews are a must in today’s marketplace. Nearly everyone seeks out customer reviews before making a buying or booking decision. If you want to know if a hotel is foreigner friendly, just “Google it.” By reading guest comments, it will be easy for international travelers to determine if they want to stay at your hotel or not. Guests love the service, and it reflects in their customer satisfaction scores and online reviews. The more positive reviews from guests who loved their stay because they didn’t encounter frustrating language barriers, the more likely the hotel will grab the attention of other travelers who speak a foreign language.

Raising Service Levels

Adding the Google Assistant’s interpreter mode will generate good will by showing guests from a foreign market that you value their business and that the hotel is going the extra mile to ensure an exceptional stay experience. There is no better way to personalize a stay than to enable guests to speak requests in their own voices and with their own colloquialisms and accents and hear their requests conveyed clearly.

Ensuring Consistency

Consistency of service across the hotel enterprise is important, especially if you fly the flag of a global hotel brand. Placing a Google Nest Hub with the Google Assistant’s interpreter mode at all properties within the portfolio ensures that consistency and it communicates to travelers that no matter which hotels they visit within the chain, they are guaranteed a frictionless stay due to the provided translation technology.

Motivating Employees

Happy employees mean happy guests, and happy guests spend more money. By giving hotel staff tools that will make it easier for them to do their jobs, it will ultimately increase guest satisfaction and drive revenues. If your hotel has a significant number of employees who only speak one language, adding the Google Assistant’s interpreter mode will enable staff to do their jobs better. It will boost productivity, eliminate miscommunications, and improve morale.

When guests have an unpleasant stay because they feel their needs aren’t met or the language barrier causes too much confusion and frustration, the hotel can expect to lose business. The Google Assistant’s  interpreter mode on the Google Nest Hub, provisioned and managed by Volara, is a smart way of doing business.  Not only will it make guests happy by enabling them to request onsite services in their own language, it will reap intangible returns from positive reviews and happy employees, resulting in an improved bottom line.

David Berger is the Founder and CEO of Volara, the voice hub for the hospitality industry. Volara’s conversation management software and secure integrations hub turns the leading consumer smart speakers and natural language processing platforms into a hotel business tool.  Volara is building voice interfaces for leading hotel technologies, while providing hotels the software to manage conversations with their guests at scale. Volara is the Official and Exclusive Partner of Marriott for pilots of voice technologies.  It is also developing voice-based solutions for leading brands like Viceroy, Melia, Two Roads, and more.

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New this year was a “Travel & Tourism” educational track that highlighted how smarter and safer technologies are transforming the travel and tourism industries. A technology that remained in the spotlight during the three-session program was voice – such as the in-room solution atop Amazon Alexa powered by Volara that enables hotel guests to request services on voice command in the privacy of their rooms or the newly launched 29 language translation tool for hotel front and concierge desks known as the Google Assistant’s interpreter mode.

Both solutions improve guest engagement and mitigate the challenges many travelers face when at a hotel. Removing friction from the hotel guest experience with voice technology has the potential to redefine hospitality.

“Today’s travelers expect and demand the same mobility and connectivity they enjoy every day along every step of a journey,” said Dorothy Creamer, CES Travel & Tourism Session Moderator and Editor of Hospitality Technology. “As voice becomes the preferred method for guests to request service and information in their daily lives, travel providers will need to follow suit and use voice as a primary platform to remove friction from experiences. Empowering staff with voice-enabled devices will also increase efficiency resulting in happier guests and staff.”

As Creamer noted, voice technology solves a problem that has taunted the travel industry for years: Friction.

The three sessions of the Travel and Tourism educational track highlighted the following:

• “AI and VR in Travel” discussed how travel companies are using voice assistants to answer travelers’ questions and stay competitive. The announcement that Viceroy Hotel Group – after three full hotel deployments – is going ‘all in’ preceded CES and brought this to life.
• “The Travel Experience of the Future” looked at how technology – including voice assistants – are leading advancements and disruption in the travel industry. The session explored how hotels, airports and cruise lines are leveraging this technology to enhance the guest experience. The simultaneous announcement from American Airlines that they’ve adopted the Google Assistant’s interpreter mode re-emphasized the points made in this session
• “Smart Tourism” focused on how technologies – including automated voice – are assisting decision-makers in enhancing efficiency, sustainability and the user experience. The improved understanding of travelers needs – resulting from increased communication with them and a data-driven understanding of those communications when voice assistants serve as an intermediary – crystallized this session.

“Named the ‘Best Voice Activated Tech Product of 2020’ by HotelTechReport last week, we were especially thrilled to see voice technologies taking center stage at CES 2020,” said David Berger, Volara CEO. “By adding Volara-powered voice assistants in hotel rooms, as well as now at front desks and concierge stands, we are enabling operators to reduce friction in guest service – extending a familiar on command home experience to the hotel environment. We’ve spent the past four years developing conversation-management software that improves the accuracy of interactions while ensuring hotel guest privacy so travelers can have immersive, interactive and memorable experiences without friction. Central to this strategy has been collaborations with the leading natural language processing platforms that guests know and love from their homes, cars, and phones to thrive in these unique commercial environments. We believe on command is the new on demand in hospitality, and we are eager to see what the future holds for this application.”

CES® 2020 is the world’s largest and most influential tech event, where the entire technology ecosystem gathers to conduct business, launch products, build brands and partner to solve some of the world’s most challenging issues. More than 4,500 exhibitors launched nearly 20,000 new transformative tech products to more than 170,000 attendees January 7 to 10, encompassing 5G connectivity, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, smart cities and resilience, sports, robotics and more. CES 2020 featured new and expanded exhibit areas, 300 conference sessions with 1,100 speakers, and more than 1,200 startups from 45-plus countries.

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The new solution, which runs on the Google Nest Hub, benefited from successful pilots in 2019 at Dream Downtown New York City, Caesars Las Vegas, and Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport, among other hotels.

“Hoteliers can now roll out the technological red carpet for hotel guests speaking 29 different languages.  With millions of travelers staying at hotels in locations where their native language is not widely spoken, hoteliers have long recognized they need to do more to serve these valuable customers,” said David Berger, CEO of Volara. “This new solution enables hotels to scale their unique brand of hospitality service to guests from many cultures, geographies, and language backgrounds.”

“At Dream Hotels, delivering a frictionless experience for all guests remains a top priority,” said Hotel Group CEO Jay Stein. “Thanks to the voice assistant solution provided by Volara and the Google Assistant, we are successfully facilitating highly accurate, multilingual interactions with travelers from across the globe. Even those with the most unique accents and distinct colloquialisms are having more fulfilling conversations with staff about the property, our check-in and billing processes, services and amenities, and things to do around town. By offering real-time voice translation from Volara and the Google Assistant at the Registration and Concierge desks, Dream Downtown has significantly raised the bar on hospitality.”

Dream Downtown Hotel Manager Felipe Munoz added: “International guests are engaging with our voice translation service from Volara and the Google Assistant every day. Even those who speak some English are having deeper, more meaningful conversations because of this technology. We have three Google Nest Hubs running the Google Assistant’s interpreter mode; two at Registration and one at the Concierge desk. When we see people having trouble communicating, we present the device and there is an immediate shift in the guest’s demeanor. Frustration is replaced with excitement! Anything a guest needs to know can instantly be communicated in their native language. They may ask for a restaurant recommendation, inquire about service hours, or request a detailed explanation of incidental charges. Regardless of what the question is, it’s rewarding to know we are improving customer service, reducing stress for staff, and greatly enhancing our guests’ experiences through real-time translation. It’s a great tool.”

The Google Assistant’s interpreter mode technology is now available to hotels across the globe.

The return on investment (ROI) is measurable as the hassle-free solution enables hotels to:

• Attract Travelers from Around the World
• Drive Revenue from International Guests
• Serve Guests in Their Own Language
• Generate Positive Online Reviews in Multiple Languages
• Modernize the Front Desk Experience

Guests and employees can use Google Assistant’s interpreter mode to translate any of the following 29 languages: Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino (Tagalog), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

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“Wanting to further make the Viceroy guest experience feel like a natural extension of how our guests operate daily, we incorporated a voice technology solution into our guestrooms,” said Darren Clark, vice president of technology for Viceroy Hotels & Resorts. “Volara meets the complex technical specifications of the hotel and simultaneously adheres to our obligation to ensure guest privacy.”

“When we began looking at voice technologies, we hoped to find a partner that was innovative and flexible with integrations to other third-party applications,” said Clark. “Volara understood our vision, and it already had integrations to more than 40 hotel technologies, including IPTV, room controls, PBX, music, and work order-management. Security was also extremely important to us. Volara ensures that recordings of guests are never associated with their personally identifiable information. They make sure that all recordings of guests are deleted within 24 hours – a distinct difference from the management of user recordings in the consumer environment.”

To date, guest feedback on having Alexa in rooms has been positive and reflected in online reviews and post-stay surveys. On average, the property is seeing a broad array of interactions ranging from controlling the TV and streaming music to making requests and asking about hotel amenities and services. Feedback from group business and wedding parties has been extremely positive as well.

While also in guestrooms, the Hotel Zetta San Francisco has placed an Amazon Alexa powered by Volara in the lobby to extend guest interaction and add another touchpoint to engage with the hotel. Viceroy and Volara are currently discussing a meeting room application as it would be a valuable guest service for meeting planners and social groups to use voice commands to control lighting, start video presentations, order food-and-beverage, and place additional requests from meeting rooms at the hotels.

Volara’s integration to INNCOM by Honeywell is enabling Viceroy L’Ermitage Beverly Hills guests to control lighting, Do Not Disturb/Make up Room settings, and room temperature; integration to Sonifi is allowing guests to use their voices to control the TV, change channels and adjust the volume; integration to the ALICE Hotel Operations Platform is seamlessly transmitting guest requests for pillows, toothbrushes, minibar refreshments and more; integration to iHeartRadio is enabling guests to play music and listen to podcasts; and the solution is facilitating direct calls through Alexa to the front desk, concierge, valet etc. At Hotel Zetta, Volara integrations include ALICE, the MCOMS Guest Room Entertainment Platform, and iHeartRadio. At Viceroy Los Cabos, Volara integrations include ALICE, Innspire and INNCOM by Honeywell.

Viceroy is also considering a voice assistant solution powered by Volara for back-of-house applications to streamline engineering tasks, enable room status changes, and facilitate staff-to-staff communications.

“Volara is honored to be serving as the exclusive provider of voice-based technologies for Viceroy Hotels & Resorts,” said David Berger, Volara CEO. “It’s exciting to see these leading hotels flourish as both guests and staff benefit from the voice interactions. As this luxury boutique hotel brand continues to inspire travelers to create their own singular journey, Volara continues to strive for personalization while implementing robust guest privacy and data security measures at all Viceroy hotels. We love working with innovative hoteliers and are eager to grow our collaboration with Viceroy in the new year.”

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