This past
holiday season, Amazon sold “tens of millions” of Alexa-enabled devices; the Echo
Dot was the top-selling item across all Amazon.com categories and across all
manufacturers, according to the online retailer and cloud computing company. In
January, Google also announced it had sold “tens of millions” of Google Home
voice-activated devices in 2017.
As adoption
of voice-enabled devices increases on the consumer side, business travel
suppliers will develop their platforms with voice capability in mind to satisfy
demand, just as they’ve had to create consumer-like travel apps. “Either you
[as a supplier] will be left behind, or you’ll provide more value leveraging
such devices and technology,” Omega World Travel VP of IT and data analytics
Nadim Hajje told me recently.
In 2012,
Oracle Fusion Expenses became the first expense management system to
incorporate voice functionality, allowing travelers to capture expenses
on-the-go with a voice note. Coupa and Traveldoo followed in 2015. Last year,
Coupa VP of product and segment marketing Sunny Manivannan said voice
recognition devices were poised to gain more traction among expense technology
providers. And voice technology is catching on throughout the travel sector,
not just in expense.
Alexa has
around 170 travel and transportation functions, which Amazon calls “skills,”
and in December it launched Alexa for Business. Concur was among the first to
develop a business travel skill, allowing Concur users to inquire about
upcoming business trips. Omega is waiting for Amazon to approve its Alexa
skill, which will allow travel managers to pull up traveler location
information from its OmegaCare duty of care solution with a voice command. The
Alexa skill responds to similar commands as Omega’s chatbot. OmegaCare pulls
booking data from Concur, Cytric and GetThere and pulls off-channel bookings from
itineraries that travelers send in.
Suppliers
will have to ensure voice recognition is flawless and intuitive and has
accompanying desktop or mobile integrations so travelers and travel managers
can see complex responses easily, but the industry is just at the beginning of
what is possible.
Watch for
future voice recognition developments this year in data analytics, travel
booking and expense report creation. Hajje predicted that voice-activated
devices will replace legacy telephony systems and disrupt the mobile apps
market. “If I was on a mobile phone, I’d have to pivot into several apps to get
the data … but what’s more natural than talking or even chatting with a
chatbot? We’re only scratching the surface,” he said.