Furama City Centre introduces Echo Dot invisible butler

Singapore-based Furama City Centre introduced Amazon’s Echo Dot, a hands-free, voice- controlled device to be placed in selected guestrooms, enhancing guests’ in-room experience. This new service initiative underscores the hotel’s value proposition of creating memorable guest experiences. Furama City Centre is the first four-star in Singapore to roll out this voice-controlled device in-room, and presents guests with their very own "invisible butler" that will control room lights, play music, tell bed time stories to children, read news, conduct your own personal fitness work out and more, with voice commands in an easy, intuitive way.

This futuristic technology creates a seamless in-room guest experience, and infuses an effortless accessibility for Furama City Centre guests, the hotel said in a release. There is no longer a need to manually flip light switches, constantly check weather forecast, or manually turn on the music. With simple voice commands, guests can enjoy and revel in an engaging experience with pre-programmed answers pertaining to their trip.

Called Alexa Voice Service, it will be the invisible butler that can recommend nearby attractions to visit, the nearest convenience store and the operating hours of facilities within the hotel. Furama City Centre will first roll out the Amazon Echo Dot in 23 of the hotel rooms and will look to expand this technology for the remaining guestrooms.

“To use Echo, guests just need to say the wake word 'Echo' with a command, and they will be able to receive a response instantly,” Jovian Hun, manager, Furama City Centre, said in a release. “The millennial generation, and users of iPhones who understand how Siri works, will be familiar with this technology. By introducing this intuitive device in-room, we hope to provide a different dimension to the in- room experience for our guests and finally bring more value to our customers.”