Throwing voice search into the mix to get flight, hotel and rail results

Voice search, to some extent, is still in its relative infancy in the travel industry despite the buzz around Apple‘s Siri and the voice recognition capabilities of Google Android.

While a full blown service at a major travel brand has yet to materialise, companies such as Evature (or Eva, Expert Virtual Assistant) are trying their best to push the technology into the mainstream.

Eva was one of the APIs thrown in to the pot for THack London this week, with founder Tal Weiss also having a go at creating his own hack for the event.

Similar to the winning effort from SITA Lab from the first THack London in February 2011, Weiss’s effort uses Google Android voice recognition system to allow users to search for particular products.

For flight search the hack uses the API from Vayant; hotels come via Expedia Affiliate Network; and rail from Travelport.

Here is Weiss demoing his hack, including useful feedback towards the end of the clip for developers. Watch out for the “what is the meaning of life?” segment at around 5 mins 20 secs:

Eva is already full formed product – for the hack Weiss simply tapped in the plugged APIs in to the existing and underlying technology.

Unfortunately for Weiss and Evature, on this occasion THack London was won by TripCommon.

Sponsors of THack London:

Related posts:

1. Creativity everywhere – results from Tnooz THack London
2. How does voice search change the travel industry?
3. Google testing expanded flight search results