‘Alexa, take me to Doncaster’– Virgin becomes first train company to sell tickets through voice-command
Train passengers can now book tickets using nothing more than their words, as Virgin Trains becomes the first travel operator to collaborate with the voice-activated Amazon Echo.
As of today, anyone with an Alexa-enabled Amazon device can book an advance single ticket using a single voice command.
“We’re thrilled to work with Virgin Trains to offer customers a completely new way to buy train tickets,” said Giulio Montemagno, Director of Amazon Pay EU. “With Alexa and Amazon Pay, Virgin Trains customers can now search, select and buy train tickets entirely through voice.
“This is a first-of-a-kind service that will make it easier than ever to find and book the ticket you want, even when you’re busy doing something else - all you need to do is ask Alexa.”
Tickets can be booked on all Virgin West Coast routes and on East Coast routes between King's Cross, Newcastle, Edinburgh, York, Darlington and Doncaster.
As we enter a new era in the way we book train tickets, it's important to remember it wasn’t always this easy.
In the early nineteenth century, the very first railway companies would issue handwritten tickets - a time-consuming process whereby the ticket clerk would have to write out each one individually, often resulting in long queues at train stations.
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The more efficient Edmonson railway ticket was introduced in the 1840s. Each ticket would be given an individual serial number and date-stamped - a process that speeded up the ticket-buying process and continued in the UK until 1990 when it was replaced by the APTIS orange card tickets.
The ticket vending machine was introduced in the early Nineties in a bid to speed up the ticket-buying process, although recent research by the Office of Rail and Road suggests that one in 11 rail passengers still buys the wrong ticket for their journey using one of these machines.
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Brits have been able to book train tickets online since 1999 and either print tickets, collect at the station or receive them by post.
Until today, using a mobile app like The Trainline or National Rail and receiving an e-ticket was the quickest way of booking a train ticket.
Finding the cheapest and best ticket for a journey is often an arduous process, even for the most seasoned rail passengers - time will tell whether Alexa is capable of guaranteeing that train passengers are getting the best deal.
