• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, November 15, 2017

The hotel room of the future is in the works.

Marriott has teamed with Samsung and Legrand to create the next generation smart hotel room.

The idea is to leverage mobile and voice technologies to personalize a hotel stay.

At Marriott’s IoT Guestroom Lab, a person could ask a virtual assistant for a wakeup call at a certain time, use a full-length mirror for a yoga routine, start a shower at the desired temperature pre-stored in a customer’s profile and request various housekeeping services, all via voice, according to Marriott.

In addition to providing customized services for hotel guests, the project aims to create an end-to-end approach for hotel owners to deploy.

Marriott International comprises 30 hotel brands with 6,400 properties in 126 countries. These include Marriott, Ritz-Carlton and the recently acquired Starwood chain.

For the project, Samsung will provide its IoT ARTIK platform and SmartThings Cloud, enabling interactive lighting and various voice activations.

Legrand, which specializes in digital building technologies, also has an IoT initiative called the Eliot Program.

The program is intended to serve both hotel owners as well as hotel guests, according to Karim Khalifa, senior vice president, global design, at Marriott International.

“We are seeking feedback from owners and development partners as well as our own brand leaders, who will help determine which aspects of the IoT system could work best for their brand and the brand’s target customer,” Khalifa told me. “At the same time, we are using the lab to gather feedback from customers, who will be the ultimate end users. Our goal is to create an intuitive experience for them so it’s easy to use.”  

The voice command approach is not yet finalized.

“The current room for new build hotels uses an Alexa model to activate commands, but we have not made any final decisions about one specific product,” said Khalifa.

Marriott is taking a two-pronged approach with the lab, one for existing hotels and one for new properties.

“Marriott, Samsung and Legrand built two rooms in our IoT Guestroom Lab: one is a fully connected, completely immersive experience for new developments while the other is a refurbished concept that incorporates a few elements of the full IoT experience that some owners may want to include in current properties,” said Khalifa. “Our goal is to create a connected solution that can be deployed throughout an entire hotel, to give guests the ability to further personalize their hotel stays.”

The lab is not for guests to stay at, though a Marriott exec says the company will pursue live hotel rooms for further testing in 2018.