Volara and Schneider Electric have signed a partnership agreement to combine their automation and voice technology expertise to co-develop new products in the hospitality industry. Together, the companies will provide intuitive voice-activated guestroom control that enhances the guest experience and provides enriched analytic capabilities that can improve operational efficiency for the hotel.
As the first step in this collaboration, the two companies have completed a new application programming interface that connects Schneider Electric's room controls to Volara's cloud software solution, which will enable guests to intuitively control their room using voice commands. To implement this solution, hotels will be able to choose any of the major natural language processing platforms, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant or IBM Watson, to enable voice control of the guest room's lighting, thermostat, curtains, sheers, make-up-room and do-not-disturb features.
“Our hotel customers need to move at the speed of the guest,” Shovan Sengupta, Schneider’s global VP, hotel segment, said in statement. “Guest expectations, mostly driven by millennials, are soaring due in part to the expansive adoption of connected home technologies. Guests expect the hotel environment to be the same as, or better than, home. They want a digital, frictionless experience, and voice control is quickly becoming part of that experience. Our collaboration with Volara enables us to deliver the technology solutions that hotels need to ensure exceptional guest satisfaction. Now when our customers request voice-driven room controls, we can respond instantly with a robust, scalable solution."
Cybersecurity is of critical importance to both companies, and the architecture of Volara’s software was proven to contain layers of protection for guests' personally identifiable information and the proprietary data of the hotel.
"This integration delivers a seamless experience that is engaging, modern, frictionless and fun from the moment a guest opens the door to their room," Volara CEO Dave Berger said. “Together we are extending the at-home experience to the hotel room by enabling interactions on voice command that are really cool and flexible.”