Expedia Launches An Amazon Alexa Voice Skill
Expedia.com has launched a travel updates skill for the Amazon Alexa Voice Service, enabling customers to receive important travel updates and information by voice through Alexa-enabled devices such as the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Amazon Fire TV.
The Expedia skill for Alexa offers a voice-activated method to hear details on upcoming trips purchased on Expedia.com and to ask for specifics regarding hotel bookings, flight status, loyalty points balances, rental car reservations, and more.
"Expedia remains committed to investing in voice recognition and natural language processing technologies to gain a deeper understanding of the unique nuances associated with the rapidly evolving field of voice-centered interactions," said Tony Donohoe, chief technology officer and senior vice president of technology at Brand Expedia, in a statement. "Our skill for Amazon Alexa, alongside our recently launched Expedia bot for Facebook Messenger, are prime examples of how we are striving to generate effective user feedback with Expedia content on new emerging platforms and to give our customers even more ways to get real-time travel updates using whatever device they choose. Ultimately, we want to better serve travelers everywhere."
"We're excited to work with Expedia to bring personalized travel-updates to our Alexa customers, and just in time for the busiest travel season of the year," said Rob Pulciani, director of Amazon Alexa, in a statement. "Now Alexa and Expedia customers have the ability to track their flights, book their car rental, and get real-time updates on delays or gate changes—all hands-free by just using your voice. We can't wait for our customers to try this out."
The Expedia skill for Alexa is free and available on any device that supports Amazon Alexa in English in the United States. Amazon device owners will need to go into the Skills section of the Alexa app, search for Expedia, and click enable to use the app.