At the annual IBM Think conference held in Las Vegas, USA from March 18-19, IBM launched Watson Assistant with special focus on hospitality and automotive industries.
The new AI assistant differs from exiting virtual voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant by offering a “white label” service. Which basically means hotels can use their own products such as Hilton’s ‘Connie’ robot (which is Watson-enabled) but use IBM’s Watson Assistant to provide the concierge-like services that creates a “differentiated and personalised experience for hotel guests,” a statement on IBM’s website claims.
And, instead of being consumer-oriented like others similar products in the industry, Watson will integrate will hotels’ back-end systems for both individual properties as well as the entire brand.
Watson Assistant will offer features such as introduce itself and provide information about the hotel and its services; learn about your guest and develop a cognitive profile based on their interactions, orders, room settings, special requests and other preferences; and understand context and anticipate guest needs by offering helpful suggestions at the right time, some of them driving new revenue.
However, the services also include data privacy. Hotels won’t have to share the data garnered by the guest interactions with IBM unlike Alexa.
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