Sponsored Listings:
Kayak has launched the ability to book hotel rooms using the Alexa virtual personal assistant in the Amazon Echo smart speaker.
Previously, Alexa could be used to search for flights, hotels and rental cars via Kayak, but now bookings can be completed using Alexa.
To book a hotel using Alexa, users have to sync or create a free Kayak account and enable the Kayak skill in the Alexa app. Then users can ask things like, “Alexa, ask Kayak to book me a hotel room in Boston.”
The actual booking transaction happens on Booking.com or Priceline.com. The OTAs process payment and are responsible for customer service. Kayak, Booking.com and Priceline.com are all owned by Priceline Group.
Kayak also announced several other updates to its Alexa skill, including the ability to ask Alexa to ask Kayak when a user’s next trip or flight is, search flights by cabin class, and set up a price alert to track flight prices.
Kayak also hinted that hotel booking may soon come to the Echo Show, a device that combines a video screen with Alexa technology for things like video calls and YouTube videos.
“We continue to see incredible potential in NLP (natural language processing), specifically voice-search, as a tool for travelers to both plan and manage their trip,” Kayak said in a blog post. “In combining our love for Alexa with what we’ve already learned from launching the Kayak skill, we decided that this was an awesome platform to take voice-enabled travel search to the next level.”
Sоurсе: travelweekly.com
