9.2.2020
When The Gale South Beach, a Curio Collection by Hilton hotel, reopens in October, Volara will be there supporting travelers with a contactless guest engagement and touchless room controls solution on the Google Nest Hub in its guestrooms. Rather than picking up the phone to call room service or request a forgotten amenity at the front desk, guests can speak simply commands in their guestroom to enable private, automated and live and automated conversational interactions with staff.
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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