Alexa, Where Art Thou?
Missing the Amazon Echo while on the road
When you spend enough time on the road, much of what you miss back in your home tends to be the mundane stuff: your bed, a favorite chair, etc. The past few trips, I’ve noticed myself longing for one thing far more often, because the lack of it absolutely changes my daily behavior: Amazon’s Echo.
Believe me, it’s as weird for me to type this as it is for you to read it. But it’s true, I miss Alexa. The reasons why should be fairly obvious: I now use the Echo to do a number of things in my house throughout a day, and that number continues to grow.
Said out loud (or written down) such things may sound silly. Asking Alexa to play some jazz music, for example. I mean, I have my iPhone (and iPad) with me as well, so I could just pull up some jazz music on those. But I’ve grown accustomed to saying the magic words “Alexa, play some jazz…” and it just working. There’s no device to turn on. No app to open. No list to scroll through. The difference is subtle, yet increasingly profound.
Yes, I could ask Siri to do this as well. But, well, that’s not the relationship I have with Siri. Our relationship is more about pulling up random facts about a city when we’re out and about, walking around.
For me, increasingly, the context around when and where we use these bits of technology is key. Alexa, given that she’s baked into the always-on and stationary Echo devices, is a home use case. Siri, given that she’s baked into the iPhone (and iPad) is more for on-the-go.¹
Anyway, I find myself on the road once again. And I find myself having to remind myself that I can’t talk to Alexa even though I’m in a home-like environment.
The solution to this should be obvious: put Echos in hotel rooms.² And it would seem that the early work on this has already begun. The high level here is just such an obvious win-win. The customer who is used to Alexa gets to talk to her on the road. And Amazon gets more usage of Alexa.
One level deeper, it’s even more of a win. If a hotel can program Alexa in such a way to be useful to their specific locale, that would be huge. Imagine if rather than having to call the front desk about a question, or to go to the concierge to get some information, you could just ask Alexa… This is so obviously the way to handle a lot of requests (with the front desks and concierges serving more as a back-up).
To some, this may sound dystopian. But I’d bet on convenience winning out. To others, this will sound terrifying because you’ll have a device listening in your hotel room! But I think the correct way for hotels to handle this would be to set the microphone on these devices to ‘off’ by default, and when your either being shown to your room (or reading your in-room welcome note), the microphones can easily be turned ‘on’, if the guest would like the service.
For Amazon (or which ever company ends up providing the smart speaker service for that hotel), this is all even more of a win still. For existing users like myself, it keeps us hooked into and extends the Alexa economy. For new users, it’s the perfect place to showcase how an Echo might fit into your home. The first time the kids say, “Alexa, play some Christmas music!” I imagine they’ll be all-in and need one for the home.
“Alexa, order an Echo.” I can hear it now. Music to Amazon’s ears.³
¹ I think this split favors Amazon greatly, by the way — did you see the sales numbers today? — but that’s probably another post. How will HomePod change this equation, if at all? I’ll probably write such a post tomorrow :)
² Seems like just a couple years ago that I was making the same case for putting an Apple TV in every hotel room because AirPlay was/is so brilliant. As I edit this, I’m watching Netflix via AirPlay in a hotel. Increasingly, this is normal. (Before that, it was iPhone chargers on hotel bedsides, of course.)
³ Which begs a slight question about how to handle devices not tied to any single Amazon account, so ordering may be a little trickier. Still, all relatively easily solvable issues.
(Update 12/28/17 — The promised follow-up):
