Aloft Introduces Voice Activated Hotel Rooms

I have hue lights hooked up to my Echo at home and I can't imagine going back to the dark days of switches. But, as I travel so much, I find myself almost asking the hotel room to turn the lights on.

I think if you ever started to use it you'd have a hard time going back to manual switches.

No and No, There is a tendency to make this "One size fit all" and it really doesn't.
American companies have tried to make voice recognition work for non-US residents for more than 25 years. And with Abysmal results. E.g. Siri still doesn't talk Danish to a level where it is usefull, and Siri is having great difficulties understanding Danish Accent.
I dread the day I will be told, I have to sleep in an overheated room where the lights cannot be turned off, because some tech geek got the idea that everything should be controlled via an Ipad, and the rest of the hotel in the city are sold no, so no chance of moving.

This is a good accessibility feature for blind or visually impaired users. All too often, any sort of touch screen device in a hotel has not been configured with accessibility features. Especially being able to turn on and off the lights, and adjust the thermostat with ease will be helpful. Many different kinds of Thermostats and light controls are found in hotel rooms, so this feature will make it faster for blind and sighted users alike to very quickly access these controls without having to learn an interface per se.

I wonder if these iPads can also have the full featured VoiceOver screen reader activated, or if they are locked down? This would enable a blind user, for instance, to sign in to their iTunes account. VoiceOver can typically be toggled by saying to Siri "turn on VoiceOver," or "Turn Off VoiceOver."

I've wondered also for a while why hotels have not outfitted rooms with the Amazon Echo with Alexa which provides a lot of voice activated features out of the box and through skills. The Amazon Echo with Alexa also provides good nonvisual accessibility.

DO NOT WANT.

I've been working with voice recognition technology for 30+ years. The Amazon Echo is about the closest thing I've seen to a practical voice recognition device, but even it gets it wrong. I have one and enjoy it, but I've learned what it's limitations are. The most useful one for me is "what time is it?" so I don't have to have a bright alarm clock lighting up my otherwise pitch-black room.

As far as a robot butler, meh. I'll take a well-trained human any day.

Can it pack and unpack all my Louis Vuitton bags and hang all my Burberry shirts and Trench coats in the wardrobe in the correct order or make me a bubble bath with pink rose petals only? If not, and as a SPG Platinum Ambassador guest, I'll stick with The Real Butlers like The St. Regis Butlers cuz this Diva ain't gon' do all that stuff himself!!