Sorry ! Alexa can’t book your flight tickets in India — not yet

• Amazon launched new flight booking service some time back and Business Insider gave it a shot.
• Analysts suggest that flight booking service can be a huge step up for Amazon Pay, which got a total infusion of ₹12.5 billion for its India division in 2018.

Amazon unveiled new flight booking service last week and Business Insider gave it a shot.

The e-commerce giant is looking to become the one-stop destination for all of its users needs with skills that can support every aspect of the user’s lifestyle. The strategy is similar to Alibaba and Tencent in China. Analysts suggest that flight booking service can be a huge step up for Amazon Pay, which got a total infusion of ₹12.5 billion for its India division in 2018.

Amazon’s entry in the travel industry is going to threaten a number of local players in India including the biggest player of the Indian market, MakeMyTrip that now has a market cap of $2.5 billion. But how does it work?

Let’s jump on to my experience. Read on to see what made Amazon stand out from the others in its new flight booking service

First up, I haven’t used Alexa before.

Prabhjote Gill has been using first generation Echo Dot for a year. “How can I fly to Mumbai,” she asked Alexa, which suggested to navigate WikiHow to help with that.

We then realised to make certain things work you have to install the requisite alexa skill. So she searched for the ‘flight finder services’ in Alexa’s skill store.

While ClearTrip does show up as an option when you open the Amazon India skill store, the 1st generation Echo Dot doesn’t support country-specific settings.

We, instead, installed the KAYAK skill on Alexa and created an account on the travel website so that the skill could be synced with the Alexa app.

Alexa was able to ascertain the flight price and timings from flights from Mumbai to Delhi using KAYAK but the figures were in dollars, which isn’t optimal for the Indian user.

According to Amazon’s statement, currently Alexa cannot book flight tickets. However, using Goibibo Alexa skill you can find out information about the cheapest flight fares.

Then I went to another friend who has Alexa Echo, third generation. His Alexa was able to find out information about flights with details on the departure and the respective prices, but the figures were still in dollars. And even if Alexa helps you add the ticket to the cart you cannot make payments.

The payment system in India can be tricky as it requires two-step verification. Users have to input their card details, generate an one-time-password (OTP), input that password and only then will a transaction be complete. The OPT is meant to avoid any digital theft in the system.

Then, I tried booking from the website itself.