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Online Travel

Expedia Turns to Amazon Alexa for Its First Attempt at Voice Search

Dennis Schaal photo
Dennis Schaal

Photo Credit: The Amazon Echo Dot can now handle your music, garage doors, and car rentals, with the latter courtesy of Expedia. Amazon

Skift Take

When it comes to new tech platforms and technologies such as voice-activated search with Amazon Alexa, the advantage, in the short term, goes to the big travel tech and marketing companies, including online travel agencies and metasearch companies, because they have the engineering staff and other resources to address these disruptions.

If there's a new platform, then leading travel companies will be there to test it because they think consumers might be there too. So it is with Amazon Alexa, a voice-activated personal assistant, and its Amazon Echo and Echo Dot devices. Expedia debuted an Alexa "skill" today that enables Expedia customers to ask Alexa about their existing Expedia flight reservations and then to book a car rental or inquire about their Expedia loyalty program numbers. Consumers can't yet make a flight or hotel booking through the Expedia Alexa skill, but that's in the works. This is Expedia's first voice-activated search product -- which can be done hands- and eyes-free -- and builds on Expedia's work in natural language processing, wh

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