"Alexa, what's the weather today?"
"Alexa, play TuneIn."
"Alexa, add Excedrin to my shopping list."
"Alexa, play Jeopardy."
I use Amazon's Echo speaker and its virtual personal assistant, Alexa, on what probably amounts to an hourly basis for both practical reasons and entertainment. In fact, the above requests were all made before 9 a.m. last Wednesday, and I probably left out a few here.
For the most part, I know what I can ask Alexa — though I do sometimes get the frustrating response of "Hmm, I don't know that one" — and have incorporated it into my daily routine. I've been continually excited to see travel brands introducing Alexa skills, like Skyscanner and Expedia.com, but I'm continually frustrated by different aspects of the interfaces.
Kayak recently introduced the ability to book hotels via Alexa, so I spent some time getting to know the skill and its abilities (it can also search for flights and rental cars, and track flights).
"Alexa, ask Kayak to search for a hotel room," worked well. I chose Boston and requested a check in on an upcoming weekend, and Alexa returned multiple available rooms.
With each hotel, Alexa told me the number of reviewers who rated it "excellent," how many stars it has, and where it's located in the city.
Trying to do a search for a flight, hotel and car proved a little more frustrating. After canceling my Boston hotel search, Alexa asked if I wanted to do another search, and I said yes. Alexa's response was to ask if I wanted to search for a flight, hotel or car. I said "all." That didn't work. I said, "I'm looking for all three." That didn't work, either. But, when I said "a flight, hotel and a car," that worked.
Alexa and I started with searching for a flight to Dublin leaving Nov. 3 and returning Nov. 6 (Kayak had already stored Newark, N.J., as my home airport). She returned a few options, and I declined creating a price alert for the route. When asked to search for something else, I moved onto hotel, but Alexa didn't assume it was for the same Dublin trip.
Since I got Alexa a few years ago, I've trained myself how to interact with it. Certain phrases work, certain phrases don't. To use the Kayak skill, I would clearly need to work on my own language, but in my view, that's a shortcoming — I already have particular phrases I use with Alexa in general, and with Siri. How many more do I need to remember?
It could be a generational thing. I'm a millennial, but I still prefer using a land line. I remember the days before every house had internet, and there was nothing smart at all about my first cellphone, a Nokia that resembled a small brick.
Generation Z, though, the new kids on the block, born from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, might look at voice interfaces differently. There are conflicting reports out there. For instance, a Sabre Labs survey earlier this year found that only 9% of Zers use voice assistants daily but predicted that will change as they begin driving or have other reasons to go hands-free.
Other reports indicate Gen Zers, true digital natives, will be more comfortable using voice than others.
As for my verdict on Kayak's Alexa skill, it's good for getting a ballpark idea of flight prices when you're informally travel planning (especially while you're cooking dinner). Same goes for hotels and rental cars. I would book a business hotel via Alexa, but not a leisure one without seeing photos.
The latter issue is partially addressed by the Echo Show, essentially Alexa with a video screen that can display photos. Hotel entries each have a photo associated with them, but the photos tend to be general exterior or room shots with no description of the room type.
That said, once a little more content is incorporated, I would likely use the Echo Show to book a hotel for a leisure trip.
Any frustrations I had certainly aren't limited to Kayak. The other Alexa skills I've used, both in travel and not, present the same set of challenges: Knowing how to say what you want with each individual skill.
And it's not just limited to Alexa; the same frustrations abound with Siri and other voice assistants.
In a nutshell, it's an interesting AI technology that's useful in some cases, but hasn't yet reached its full potential. But I'm glad investments are being made to further develop voice technology. It's a bright future.