The German National Tourist Board has begun promoting the country through the digital voice assistant Alexa in the UK and US.
The GNTB travel application – available regionally at the market-specific Amazon stores – is installed on Alexa as Germany Travel Tips.
For each of the 16 German states Alexa provides three tips – 48 in all – under the categories of nature, cultural experiences, active holidays and recreation.
The new Alexa skill is designed in such a way that Alexa begins asking the user for their travel preferences.
The responses then lead intuitively from one level to the next, until Alexa announces different travel recommendations and tips for a holiday in Germany, each preceded by an audio file.
Petra Hedorfer, chief executive of the GNTB explained: “Experts from the US market research company Comscore predict that as early as 2020, 50 per cent of searches will be via language assistance tools.
“With the Alexa project, we are implementing digital marketing tools as a future, innovative, information and bookings channel within destination management.”
The target audience for the GNTB’s application are millennials and digital natives between 25- and 35-yearsold – a travel-oriented target group with growth potential which is already familiar with and trusts dialogue systems and the diverse uses of digital applications.
According to a study by Globalwebindex, today, 17 per cent of the global online community already uses a digital voice assistant, with 34 per cent wishing to purchase such a device.
This means that in the foreseeable future, more than half of consumers can be reached through voice-controlled application tools.
This is even more significant for the younger 16-35-year-old target group, which accounts for two thirds of speech-driven applications.
As a markets overview, voice technology is being used intensively by users in the Asia-Pacific region plus the USA and Great Britain.