Skyscanner launches on Microsoft Cortana as one of the first third party skills

Skyscanner was recently announced as one of the first ever third party skills on Cortana. With this, users will be able to ask a range of questions to gather information through the personal assistant. Almost all the major tech companies have their versions of assistants, not only limited to mobile but taking a more central spot in our everyday lives as stand-alone devices.

Amazon has got Alexa accessible through its Echo devices, Google has got its assistant accessible through mobile devices and Google Home devices, Microsoft has Cortana available for mobile devices and its own Edge desktop browser and Apple has got Siri which is rumoured to be soon accessible via hardware Apple will launch. Industry experts have often claimed that we will continue to increase dependance on voice to interect with our devices and the tech companies are racing each other to find a prominent spot for themselves.

Skyscanner search was added as an Amazon Alexa skill near the end of last year. The skill could be used to find and compare flights. The recently launched Cortana skill also offers functionality related to flights only. One can ask about indicative pricing on any route, find suitable time to book flights and also check flight status.

Filip Filipov, Product Director at Skyscanner said of the news: “This is our first Artificial Intelligence skill using short interactions which is uniquely capable of conducting conversations and handling queries over voice and via text on screen. Once again, Skyscanner has taken a trail-blazing approach when it comes to building the most innovative conversational search tools for travel search. We believe that having the ability to ask simple, direct questions relating to flight information on any device enabled with the Cortana personal assistant is another step in offering a truly dynamic and informed eco-system of information to travellers on an unrivalled range of devices and contexts.”

Skyscanner has always been agile when it comes to experimenting with new solutions. The metasearch brand was among the first ones to launch a Facebook Messenger chat bots to search flights and also was among the initial brands onboard Google Assistant when it was first announced at Google I/O.

Akshay Sharma

Akshay is interested in e-commerce, mobile, gadgets, automobiles and transportation and has previously worked for different publications writing about mobile technologies. Fascinated by how technology is affecting our lives in unimaginable ways, he likes to keep a close watch on the new trends. He appreciates the beauty of technological development and writes about it to help the travel industry innovators reach the masses. He also keeps track of the rapidly growing startup ecosystem and believes that every new travel startup carries the promise to change things for the better. You can reach him at akshay.sharma@travhq.com.

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