Less than a year ago, Hilton announced the launch of its new smart hotel room. Now, Hilton’s Vice President of Brand and Guest Technology, Josh Weiss, is sharing his vision for its future and backstory of its development.
Connected Room currently allows guests to present their favourite viewing channels and streaming apps, set their preferred guestroom temperature, and access streaming brands from their in-room TV – including a first-of-its-kind partnership with SHOWTIME.
Here’s what’s next for Hilton’s Connected Room:
- Currently in 500 rooms, Hilton will soon offer the technology across five additional brands – in thousands of more rooms – across the country.
- Because this is a platform, much like with an Apple or Android device, new features can be rolled out more quickly without deploying new hardware. This means that in time, guests will able to do things such as upload their photos and art to display in the room, connect to new devices, and may eventually be able to use voice commands to control their room’s features or access their content.
- Connected Room will also help Hilton meet its recently announced 2030 Commitments to cut its environmental footprint in half by:
- Letting hotels “power down” rooms that are unoccupied, which happens around 70% of the time, to conserve energy
- Utilizing AI and machine learning to close the gap between energy efficiency and guest comfort
- We’ll soon preview even more smart room updates this fall in New York; more to come.
