Think of the typical hotel experience. Chances are your experience is a busy one, and you are at a hotel because of a camp, retreat, business conference, or seminar of some kind. Most hotels today are “normal” in the sense that they come with the usual furniture and hotel Wi-Fi. Perhaps they feature a Smart TV, but little else is “smart” or internet-connected about your typical hotel room.
You connect your device to the internet but cannot see a smart coffee cup, for example, or a smart coffee pot. Your hotel room’s door knob is unlikely to tell you whether or not someone has been by your room while you are out and about, and you do not need to place your finger on the door to scan it in order to gain access to your hotel room.
And yet, with the rising trend of the Internet of Things (IoT), even hotels are finding it hard to remain competitive without an additional edge or advantage. To stay ahead of the hotel race and keep in-step with consumer convenience, Hotel brand Marriott has partnered with Legrand and Samsung to create IoT Hotel Rooms.
IoT Rooms are rooms that will have internet connectivity on a mass scale: every piece of furniture (yes, including wall photos) and device will come internet-connected — at least that is the goal initially, though progress will move at a slower rate. The IoT Rooms will be powered by Marriott’s IoT Guestroom Lab at company headquarters, allowing Marriott to experiment with new features.
The IoT Hotel Rooms will examine customer responses to high-tech conveniences over the next three months before an official unveil. Current ideas for IoT Hotel Rooms are voice-activated lighting, virtual assistants, and voice-activated room controls (speak to turn on the AC or turn it off, speak to turn on the TV, and so on).
At Samsung, we aspire to make life easier and better for our consumers, whether they’re at home or their home away from home. Partnering with Legrand and Marriott, we can offer users unprecedented levels of control and personalization, thanks to our end-to-end IoT services powered by the ARTIK platform and the SmartThings Cloud. From intuitive lighting to voice-activated room controls, we’re delivering customizable, intelligent experiences that make our consumers’ lives more convenient, productive and secure,
said Samsung Electronics ARTIK IoT Senior VP and General Manager James Stansberry.
It’s likely that your smartphone, tablet, smartwatch, and other mobile devices will be compatible with all other furniture in these IoT Hotel Rooms, so Marriott’s IoT Hotel Rooms will need to work with a multitude of internet-connected platforms already in the field. Additionally, to accommodate modern design, Marriott’s partnership with Legrand and Samsung will aim to redesign current hotel rooms so that they’re both stylish and functional simultaneously. We have a feeling that Samsung’s “frame” TV and Bixby AI could become future participants in these IoT Hotel Rooms, though Marriott has confirmed little at this point.
Hotel travelers, what do you think? Would you like to have an internet-connected hotel experience? If so, what would you like to see in your future IoT Hotel Room? As for me, I’d like to see Bixby send a Tweet by way of my voice commands while I’m watching a movie and eating lunch.
