Wynn Las Vegas installing an Amazon Echo in every hotel room
The Amazon Echo has received rave reviews, including ZDNet's own 9/10 rating from October. We have seen significant improvements since its launch, with new functionality added through regular software updates.
Taking the Amazon Echo experience out of the home to the hotel room is a natural progression and should help improve the guest experience while also possibly convincing guests to buy their own Amazon Echo for home use. Amazon and Wynn Las Vegas announced plans to outfit all 4,748 of the hotel's rooms with the Echo, starting soon with the suites.
Steve Wynn, chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts, stated:
As we have moved through the years, technology has always played an important part in our resorts. The thing that Amazon has done with Alexa is quite perfect. If I have ever seen anything in my 49 years of developing resorts that has made our job of delivering a perfect experience to our guests easier and help us get to another level, it is Alexa. The ability to talk to your room is effortlessly convenient. In partnership with Amazon, becoming the first resort in the world in which guests can verbally control every aspect of lighting, temperature and the audio-visual components of a hotel room is yet another example of our leadership in the world of technology for the benefit of all of our guests.
A video of Mr. Wynn shows him using Alexa to turn on the lights, adjust the temperature, open curtains, and play the news on the TV. It will be interesting to see the specific details of this rollout as it appears that some kind of Fire TV device is also being used in conjunction with the Echo.
Given the issues I had last year with multiple people trying to use one Amazon account, I'm curious to see how the Wynn Las Vegas will deal with guest setup of each Echo. I imagine someone will have to wipe the Echo after each guest checks out, but maybe there is an enterprise system to automate that process. I would also like to see the setup process for each new guest.
It needs to be a seamless experience for guests to find it useful, but then again maybe all of the devices are setup to a hotel account so you won't find a custom Amazon experience while in your hotel room. It's exciting to see some AI roll out on a large scale and it will be an interesting test of the Amazon technology.