Alexa
Alexa travel search by voice control
Project description
Berlin, December 2017 - Joint project with Amazon. The world's first travel search with voice control for package tours and hotels has started. Voice control is becoming more and more popular, whether spoken text messages, for example in WhatsApp or the control of household appliances such as heating and lamps, make smart home devices and applications possible today. With the “travel search” skill, Alexa can now also find offers for the next vacation.
The traffics “travel search” skill is a joint project with the kind support of Amazon. The vision is that offers are not only issued in speech but also sent by e-mail. Booking inquiries can then be forwarded to travel agency partners and participating travel portals and tour operators.
The travel search skill includes 100 billion travel offers from more than 200 travel providers every day. The Alexa user has the option to use voice control to display the travel offers in a price-performance comparison. These are global hotels and package tours (hotel including flight). In addition, hotels, airlines and tour operators can store their travel offers and availability directly in Amazon Alexa.
Examples of operation
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"Alexa, ask travel search"
Buttonfor offers in Mallorca
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Technology
• traffics.de reservation system API for connecting to travel providers
• Node.JS
• Amazone Developer Skill Kit
• Various voice kits
made with love in berlin
Customer evaluation / references
The challenge was to display the hotel price live within a video. So that the price always remains fixed over the hotel with the flight of the helicopter. For this purpose, Salim developed a new video technology together with the Fraunhofer Institute - the so-called “non-linear video”, in which it was possible to import content from the Internet into the video in real time via API. At the time, it was the world's first video technology that made this possible.
Challenge / video content
The biggest challenge, however, was flying a helicopter over the hotels and along the beach and getting a stable image. The other challenge was to film the mass of holiday regions and hotels. Because in order to offer a complete travel search via interactive video, you need a certain number of beaches and hotels in order to reach the critical mass.
Salim and his team managed, step by step, within two years to sensationally fly over 15,000 hotels by helicopter and along thousands of beaches.
Overall, all beaches on Spain's coast, the islands of the Balearic and Canary Islands, Portugal's coasts, the Turkish Rivera, Egypt's coasts, the Greek islands and the island of Rügen were filmed entirely by helicopter.
