Alexa and Kayak can book your next hotel room with voice commands
Travel search engine Kayak has updated its Alexa skill to enable consumers to book hotel rooms using their voices.
Kayak has updated its Alexa skill to allow users to book hotel rooms by voice
Previously, consumers were limited to searching for flights, hotel rooms and rental cars by voice.
To use the feature, consumers must enable the Kayak skill in the Alexa app and link their Kayak accounts. From there, they can start asking Alexa to book rooms and Alexa will deliver bookable options, using consumers’ Kayak accounts to confirm the reservations. However, Kayak noted the actual booking transactions take place with a Kayak partner like Booking.com or Priceline.com.
“They’ll be the ones to process your payment and handle customer service,” Kayak said in a blog post. “You’ll see this clearly stated on your emailed booking confirmation.”
Other updates to Kayak’s Alexa skill include the ability to ask Kayak about upcoming trips and flights, as well as to search by flight cabin class and to set up price alerts to track flight prices.
“We continue to see incredible potential in [natural language processing], specifically voice search, as a tool for travelers to both plan and manage their trip,” Kayak said. “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.”
Kayak said users may also soon be able to book hotels using Echo Show devices.