In April, we reported on a company called Volara that was partnering with Google in order to equip hotel rooms with Nest Hub displays for the convenience of occupants. Volara is the leading provider of voice assistant solutions for hotels. Being able to ask Google right from your room about your reservation, order food, and see what there is to do near you during your stay is extremely useful and awesome. In fact, I think it’s the future that’s long overdue. Hands-free access to information and service increases the safety of everyone too, especially with the global pandemic still wreaking havoc.
Volara has successfully rolled its hotel solutions out to thousands of hotel rooms both in the U.S. and the U.K. and announced today that this includes guest rooms at LEGOLAND Hotel and LEGOLAND Castle Hotel at LEGOLAND California and New York Resorts! There are already a handful of things you can do with Google Assistant on the Nest Hub in your hotel room at these locations, with more to come that will undoubtedly make your stay there more convenient and fun.
To start, you can pull up recommendations for local restaurants from the hotel’s concierge or ask Google what there may be to do for fun nearby. Not only that, but you can do take a Youtube tour of LEGOLAND right from the display before visiting the park so you know exactly where to go when you arrive.
For the kids, you can pull up LEGOLAND characters on the Hub and let them speak with them using the built-in interactive experience. All LEGOLAND information you’ll need in order to plan your day will also be included with just a few taps on the display near your bedside.
Here are some Assistant commands to try out in your hotel
- “Hey Google, can you recommend a place for breakfast?”
- “Hey Google, set a LEGO alarm for 8 a.m.”
- “Hey Google, what’s the weather today at LEGOLAND California Resort?”
- “Hey Google, be my Italian interpreter” (Great for international guests – Translation works for 30 languages!)
Google reiterates in its press release that you won’t be signed into the Nest Hub in your hotel room, and no activity you perform by voice or otherwise with the device will be linked to your personal Google Account. Additionally, the standard Nest Hubs included with your experience do not include a camera and there’s a physical switch for the microphone to kill power to it so you feel safe and comfortable with it being in the room with you during your stay.
Lastly, no audio is stored, and any activities that you perform are wiped off of the device once you check out of your room and before the next guest checks into that room. There’s no doubt that these solutions will continue to evolve over time as they become more accepted and common, but thanks to Assistant and the Nest Hub, they’re already off to a fantastic start.
If I had this in my hotel room when I visited Disney World a while back, I would have been much happier – finding breakfast and other nearby activities and information was unnecessarily convoluted and required us to scour paper pamphlets. As a millennial with first-world problems, it was unbearable.
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