The future of hospitality communications is now; Voice-based contactless customer engagement provider is keeping hotel guests and staff talking safely amidst the pandemic
November 9, 2020, NEW YORK — Volara, the voice hub for the hotel industry, has been selected as one of PhocusWire’s “Hot 25 Startups” for 2021 and has been invited to present their innovative solutions during the Innovation Summit at Phocuswright 2020 on November 12, 2020. The third annual event, produced by PhocusWire, the sister media brand of travel research and events business Phocuswright, recognizes companies that have navigated through the pandemic and, importantly, are well-positioned to make a mark in their respective sectors or regions in 2021.
Volara’s next generation hospitality communications platform provides voice-based guest engagement software running on popular consumer hardware like the Amazon Echo and Google Nest Hub, among others. Its tools are used by property managers, creative agencies, and technology integrators to easily enable memorable voice-based experiences at scale. Customized to the specific property and business, Volara knows how to get customers talking and businesses benefitting from the power of voice-based engagement. Since its launch in 2016, Volara has implemented its solution with 100s of hotel groups in tens of thousands of guestrooms, counting Marriott International, Viceroy Hotel Group, Melia Hotels, Village Hotels, Delaware North, Sunstone Hospitality, and Pebblebrook Hospitality, among many others as its clients.
Kevin May, editor in chief of PhocusWire, had this to say: “Despite the huge damage that the coronavirus pandemic is inflicting on the travel, tourism and hospitality sector, we think it’s right to showcase companies that are well-positioned to both capitalize on the recovery and make a difference in their respective sectors. Volara’s contactless, voice-based guest engagement solution is playing a central role in the guest journey, through airports, to hotels, and across a variety of other hospitality venues.”
Volara CEO David Berger said this pandemic has created a challenging environment that requires hoteliers to innovate to thrive, even survive.
“2021 will be the year that voice-based contactless guest engagement becomes part of what defines a hotel,” Berger said. “The old way of running a hotel won’t cut it any longer. In addition to enabling guests to engage with the hotel room, staff, and services in a safe manner, Volara’s solutions – which turn automated voice into a business tool at hundreds of hotels across the globe – are improving operational efficiency, increasing onsite sales, driving direct bookings, and growing loyalty programs for our client hoteliers.”
Berger said Volara is a security company first and a voice-solution company second because the technology provides enterprise-grade software that protects guest privacy and safeguards hotel’s proprietary data – controls that the largest hotel enterprises in the world require. Volara ensures that recordings of guests are never maintained nor associated with any personally identifiable information – a distinct difference from the management of user recordings in consumer voice assistant environments. Volara also ensures that other hotel technologies that enhance the voice-based experience are securely integrated, establishing a fire wall between the hotel’s proprietary data and the large natural language processing platforms.
“Even before COVID-19, hotels were embracing voice technology as a means of engaging guests,” Berger said. “Today, with contactless service becoming the norm, guests are demanding that their needs be met without face-to-face interaction. Guests who are constantly asking Siri or Google or Alexa questions while at home, can now expect to have an even better more tailored on-command experience while in their hotel rooms.
“The most technology-forward hotel companies are adopting solutions that anticipate their guests’ needs and elevate the contactless and touchless travel experience of tomorrow, starting with voice,” he added. “It is now becoming commonplace for guests to ask an in-room voice assistant to make calls, play music, watch shows, bring toiletries, book services, turn on/off TVs, set alarms and more without ever lifting a finger – and certainly without touching the germ infested remote control, putting the guestroom telephone up to their lips, or being forced into a face-to-face encounter with staff.”
For more information on Volara, visit www.volara.io.
