Amazon has launched Alexa+, an artificial intelligence assistant aimed at integrating into users’ lives with the capability to entertain, organize, converse, place orders, book tickets, provide travel inspiration and more.
Major travel brands including Tripadvisor and Uber have partnered with Amazon for the debut of its next-generation voice assistant.
“With 600 million Alexa devices now out in the world, the latest advancements in generative AI have unlocked new possibilities—enabling us to reimagine the experience in our pursuit of making customers’ lives better and easier every day,” said Panos Panay, senior vice president of devices and services in a blog post focused on more than 50 things to try with Alexa+.
Amazon said it is rolling out Alexa+ out over the next few weeks in the United States, with an “early access” period, and in waves over the following months. The voice assistant, which is built on large language models that can be found on Amazon Bedrock, will be free for Prime members and available for a free for everyone else.
Using voice, users can ask Alexa+ to provide information about Uber about ride options and wait times and can then book the ride without touching their phone.
Tripadvisor and Fodors have also partnered with Amazon to provide Alexa+ users with travel planning assistance from inspiration to recommendations. Amazon stopped short of saying that Alexa+ can book travel, which OpenAI’s “Operator,”—currently operating in a research preview and with Tripadvisor as a partner—is meant to be capable of doing. Tripadvisor declined to comment for this story.
Douglas Quinby, co-founder and CEO of Arival, said there’s “enormous opportunity” for AI applications for improved customer experiences. And that opportunity has warranted “very real success stories,” he said.
But he was skeptical and said that there’s been little uptake on chat and voice tools powered by AI when it comes to planning and discovery of activities, tours and also attractions.
“Experiences are not a commodity sale. An experience is about ‘How am I going to spend me time.’ Travelers need more than price, location and star rating,” he said. “They need a feeling, an emotional connection. Can Alexa, Claude or ChatGPT deliver that?”
Lorraine Sileo, senior analyst and founder of Phocuswright Research, said it’s “about time” Alexa stepped up its game.
“It has a long way to go to compete with ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot et al for generating travel (or any other) recommendations,” she said in an email. “But considering Alexa’s convenience (can yell from any room) and its integration with Fodor’s and TripAdvisor, Alexa+ has its place for top-of-the-funnel research.”
Sileo cautioned she’s not sure that that top-of-funnel placement is enough to warrant travel booking decisions.
“The good news is that Alexa+ takes us a step close[r] to adding travel to our voice-activated shopping lists, but it will be interesting to see if consumers take to the Amazon Alexa brand when it comes to travel decision-making and purchases,” she said.
Alex Bainbridge, CEO of digital experience platform Autoura, said via email that he believes AI assistants are the way of the future, generally speaking.
“The way I see it is we won’t have tours in the future,” he said. “Instead we will have AI companions that are with you ‘all day’, but beyond that, they are with you ‘all year’ as a friend.”
Bainbridge believes travel companies are facing a challenge when it comes to distribution with AI assistants like Alexa+ developing. He believes travelers will tend to use familiar AI assistants as opposed to ones developed by a travel company.
“Consumers will just use Alexa on their trip,” he said. “For clarity, we already have Alexa on a phone app, we have devices (I have three at home in different rooms!), and there is an Alexa variant for vehicles… so it is not as static as might be assumed.”
Alexa and travel
Amazon has positioned Alexa as part of the travel world in the past, with plenty of travel brands getting in on the action.
In 2018, the company launched Alexa for Hospitality, giving travelers the ability to ask Echo questions, to have Echo connect them to guest services, to play music and more through voice. Initially, hoteliers were included in the program by invite only with brands such as Marriott involved.
Not all hotel guests were happy about the move, especially on the heels of privacy breach headlines related to the technology at the time. In 2016, Expedia launched a voice skill for Alexa-enabled devices giving users the ability to search with voice for flights or hotels, to add a rental car to already booked travel and to check details such as loyalty points or a flight’s status. Kayak also launched a voice product with Alexa in 2016 with search functionality.
Alexa has also been offered as a virtual concierge for short-term rentals, been used to provide flight updates at Heathrow Airport and, more than half a decade ago, Alexa could be used to schedule Uber or Lyft rides.
Amazon’s larger potential in travel
The e-commerce giant’s ability to become a major travel player has also long been discussed.
Amazon made headlines last summer and in the fall for its inclusion of travel deals on its self-made shopping holiday Prime Day, which boasted offerings from brands including Carnival Cruise Line, Southwest Airlines and Viator, among others. Sileo said in July that there is so much speculation around what Amazon could do in the travel space because it has so much data related to users’ buying habits and it has recommendation technology. But she wasn’t convinced at the time that Amazon would become the next big thing in the search or sale of travel.
“Travel is so complex, and Amazon is… not really into owning the product that it sells, right? It’s a marketplace. So I could see it becoming a bigger marketplace and offering more,” Sileo said. “Does that make it more like a metasearch? It’s so hard to envision exactly what they have in mind. For travel, I don’t think this is giving us too much of a glimpse.”
But, Sileo said she was keeping an open mind at the time. “Maybe it’s [the] start of something interesting.”
