December 7, 2020, NEW YORK — Volara, the voice hub for the hotel industry, announces that it has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Travel and Hospitality Competency status. This designation recognizes that Volara has demonstrated deep experience helping its hotel customers accelerate the industry’s modernization and innovation from behind-the-scenes operational efficiencies to guest-facing customer experiences – while ensuring the protection of guest privacy and hotel proprietary data. The launch of the AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency comes at a crucial time for the industry as it looks to innovate to address changing demands in the face of COVID-19.
AWS’s global travel and hospitality practice helps companies of every size and segment – including airlines, airports, ground transportation, travel services and sellers, restaurants, lodging, entertainment venues and casinos, cruise lines, and technology providers – to stay agile and accelerate innovation. Now more than ever, AWS wants to help customers succeed by connecting them to partners with deep AWS experience, and a proven track record for helping travel and hospitality companies build resilience for the long run.
AWS launched the AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency to help customers find highly specialized AWS Partners and take on the heavy lifting of identifying and validating industry leaders with proven customer success and technical proficiency. Achieving the AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency differentiates Volara as an AWS Partner with deep domain expertise in Digital Customer Engagement and Core Travel and Hospitality Applications.
“Volara has a proven track record of helping travel and hospitality companies transform their business on AWS and we’re delighted to welcome them in the launch of the AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency Program,” said David Peller, Managing Director, Travel & Hospitality, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “We look forward to seeing them work with our customers to create game-changing innovations that will impact and improve the way we fly, stay, eat, and experience our world.”
“Volara is proud to be one of the first AWS Partners to achieve AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency status,” said David Berger, Volara CEO. “Our team is dedicated to helping our clients achieve their business transformation goals using our proprietary technology and leveraging the agility, breadth of services, and pace of innovation that AWS provides.”
AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions from startups to global enterprises. To support the seamless integration and deployment of these solutions, AWS established the AWS Competency Program to help customers identify Consulting and Technology AWS Partners with deep industry experience and expertise.
Volara provides real-time conversation management and secure integrations atop Amazon Alexa for the hotel industry. It is the largest manager of Alexa devices in the hotel enterprise today. Volara’s goal is to manage Alexa devices at hotels across the globe, breathing new efficiencies in hotel service and delighting guests at every turn. Recently, Volara surpassed 10,000 devices under management, developed 40 powerful technology integrations, and established partnerships with the largest hotel brands in the world. The company has Alexa-enabled leading hotel technologies, such as workorder management systems, IPTV solutions, room controls, energy-management systems, safety systems and guest engagement solutions. It has built a voice interface for them all which increases these partners’ utilization rates and makes their products more valuable.
“Volara is delivering exceptional experiences for our customers through collaboration,” Berger said. “The better we understand our customers’ business objectives, the better we can tailor our technology solutions to achieve those objectives. For example, in collaboration with the Motif Hotel Seattle, Volara built a staff facing set of interactions that enable hotel staff to do their jobs more efficiently. In collaboration with the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, we enabled live interactions between top tier guests and the professionals at the hotel who serve them. In collaboration with the Westin Buffalo, we brought guests personal music playlists to the guestroom further differentiating the services that this hotel offers. Building atop AWS has given Volara the stability and ease of management that is required in today’s fast-moving technology landscape.”
Proven Impact. Compliance with Enterprise Standards. Differentiated Solution.
The 319-room Motif Seattle by Hyatt benefits from Volara-powered Amazon Alexa devices in all guestrooms. With Seattle being one of the nation’s fastest growing tech hubs, this voice-based contactless guest engagement and touchless room controls solution has been remarkably well-received by guests. As travelers seek out a more holistic approach to their safety and well-being amidst this pandemic, more hoteliers have embraced contactless technologies like the Volara-powered Amazon Alexa devices. Installation of the Alexa voice assistant is enabling Motif Seattle to creatively distinguish itself from other hotels in the Seattle market and helping it to solidify its market leading position.
“We found our Volara-powered Amazon Alexa devices to be a market differentiator and we cannot wait to reinforce its benefits as travel resumes,” said Motif Seattle General Manager Steve Sasso. “We believe guests will embrace the convenience and simple use of turning on the TV or requesting extra towels, all without having to touch a telephone or remote control. The industry has already seen an increase in the successful roll-out of contactless engagement like mobile check-in and guestroom key access, and we believe contactless voice on command is the next evolution in touch free guest service. Hyatt continues to be a leader in balancing new technology with the need to provide personalized, intuitive, and caring service in a safe and clean environment, and Volara and AWS are helping us maintain that standard.”
As hoteliers continue to seek further ways to personalize the experiences of each guest, Volara, running atop Amazon Alexa, will continue to deliver personal responses per guest based on a data-driven understanding of that guests’ interests and needs.
“Volara is eager to continue bringing personalization to hotels across the globe working with AWS,” Berger said. “Over time, Volara’s voice interfaces to Alexa – burnished by proprietary technology that layers on protections for guest privacy and hotel data security – will become commonplace. Compliant contactless guest engagement is of paramount importance to hotels in the post-COVID-19 pandemic world, which is why we have prioritized this above all else.”
