Managing Amazon Echo devices outside the US and UK

You will want to set up the Echo(s) in your property with a separate Amazon account that is specific to that property. If you have more than one Echo at your property, use that same account for all the devices at that location. There are a few reasons to set up your devices with a separate account:

First, if you were to use your personal account with the Echo at your vacation rental, Alexa can be set up to tie into a number of things that you would not want to share with your guests. For example, voice purchasing. There is also your personal calendar to consider, as well as shopping lists and the like.

The second reason to use a unique Amazon account for each of your VR properties is that it will allow you to establish unique custom content for that property that can be delivered through the virtual concierge. Content you define for the virtual concierge to deliver is linked to an Amazon account. Each set of content will have its own associated account. This will allow you to specify customized welcome messages for your guests and provide helpful information specific to each property. If you have multiple properties in the same location (for example multiple units in the same condominium complex), there may be no reason to have unique content for each unit, so the properties could share a single Amazon account.

If you will be streaming music with your Echo device with a service like Spotify, there is a third reason why a separate account makes sense. It involves digital rights with music. The Amazon account that you use when setting up the Echo(s) at your VR will be linked to the music service that you subscribe to. Unfortunately, Spotify is only licensed to sell 'personal' subscriptions which means you can only stream on one device (or set of devices if you set up whole house music) at a time with a given account. That means if you used the same account at multiple VRs, a guest in one VR might be happily singing along until a guest in a different VR tells Alexa to play music. At that point, the music will stop playing at the first VR, and start playing at the second VR. This is clearly not the best situation for building a great guest experience.
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To create a unique Amazon account for your vacation rental property, the mainthing you will need is an email address. If you already have a personal Gmail account, there is a very useful trick that you can use to get a new email address without actually defining one from scratch.

Here’s how to do it:

Go to this page to create a new Amazon account. In the email field add a plus sign and then a reference to your property before the @ sign. For example, let’s say your normal Gmail address is janedoe@gmail.com and your VR is a beach condo. You could then put an email address in of janedoe+BeachCondo@gmail.com. Amazon will consider this a unique account, but Google will route all messages that are sent to it over to your normal personal account.
Complete the rest of the fields and click the ‘Create your Amazon account’ button.

If you don’t already have a Gmail account and therefore can’t take advantage of this trick, you can use this alternate approach.

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