The Wynn Las Vegas adding Amazon Echo in every room

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It’s been said that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. If you’re staying at the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel, a more apt description might soon be “What happens in Vegas stays in AWS Cloud Services” because the hotel is starting an initiative to add an Amazon Echo device to each of its 4,748 rooms. Amazon Echo and its Alexa assistant are quite popular, but it remains to be seen how helpful Alexa can be in a Las Vegas hotel.

“Alexa, where’s the nearest strip club?”

“Alexa, how can I make back the $10,000 I just lost?”

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“Alexa, what are the major symptoms of syphilis?”

The options are really endless. In reality, the above suggestions are exaggerations… sure, there are undoubtedly some people going to Las Vegas that would have those questions and more, though most of them probably won’t be staying at The Wynn. In another boring dose of reality, Echo won’t be installed in all rooms until sometime in 2017, and not all Alexa Assistant features will be available initially. Hotel guests will mostly be able to access and control the various smart-home features included in their room, including temperature, lighting controls, and any audio-visual components in the room. Chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts, Steve Wynn, said as much in their press release:

The thing that Amazon has done with Alexa is quite perfect. If I have ever seen anything in my 49 years of developing resorts that has made our job of delivering a perfect experience to our guests easier and help us get to another level, it is Alexa. The ability to talk to your room is effortlessly convenient. In partnership with Amazon, becoming the first resort in the world in which guests can verbally control every aspect of lighting, temperature and the audio-visual components of a hotel room is yet another example of our leadership in the world of technology for the benefit of all of our guests.

These features sound great, though some may prefer not to be recorded while on their Las Vegas getaway. Alexa does record and send requests to Amazon’s AWS Cloud Services for processing, and it is always listening to hear its “Alexa” keyword for activation. Most hotel requests under the current implementation will probably be pretty straightforward and boring — raise the temperature, turn down the lights, etc. — but the idea of being recorded and having those recordings uploaded to a cloud service still may not appeal to some guests. You can always unplug the in-room Echo though if it makes you feel uncomfortable (and you remember to do so).

How do you feel about the Wynn Las Vegas hotel adding an Amazon Echo to each of their rooms? Good idea? Potential privacy nightmare? Tell us what you think in the comment section below, or on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.

[button link=”http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wynn-las-vegas-announces-the-addition-of-amazon-echo-to-all-hotel-rooms-300377995.html” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Wynn Hotels[/button][button link=”https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/whathappensinvegasstayswithamazon/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Via: TechCrunch[/button]
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