Throughout 2018, PhocusWire brought in-depth coverage of some of the critical topics impacting travel and organized by a different theme each month, phocuswire.com reported in the following article. In March, their theme was voice technology. They looked at the characteristics of an effective voice interface and shared specific examples from companies including Trainline, Kayak, Expedia and Skyscanner. There have been important developments since then. In June, Amazon introduced Alexa for Hospitality, and in October, Expedia created browse and book capabilities using Google Assistant. Furthermore, Amazon is continuing to roll out new Alexa-enabled products, Google and Alibaba have developed AI voice assistants, Facebook entered the fray with Portal, a combination smart speaker and voice-activated camera, and many other vendors are jumping in. These devices are expected to be popular gifts this holiday season, raising the value of the smart speaker market to $7 billion in 2019 and making it the fastest-growing connected device category in history, according to Deloitte. To provide a look ahead on this topic, Say It Now CEO Charlie Cadbury offers his take on the top five developments in voice technology he expects to see in 2019. Voice technology - Charles Cadbury, Say It Now New entrants. Samsung has stated that all products they ship will be voice-enabled by 2020. We'll start to see a lot of those come through next year, and Samsung’s Bixby will become a compelling platform for developers to engage with.  Things can only get better. Voice products are mostly cloud-based. This means that they can be, and are, improved every day.  Multi-channel. It's not all about voice. I've spent the last two years giving talks on stage trying to explain that, "The innovation is natural language processing, not smart speakers or chatbots.”  Complexity. It will become better understood through 2019 that, unlike the rise of mobile apps, where digital agencies could skill-up some developers in app building, developing compelling conversational experiences requires specialist knowledge.  References. Speak to most innovation practitioners and they will tell you of the troubles of getting credible budgets to explore burgeoning technology.  Read full article at phocuswire.com RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report