OK, Google Home, can you help me plan a vacation?
The Google Home personal assistant, a voice-activated speaker powered by Google Assistant, arrived in stores in November with some neat tricks for travelers: the ability to suggest nearby restaurants, translate foreign words, convert currency, track flight status and answer fact-based queries such as, “How much does Global Entry cost?”
Roughly six months later, it’s doing things it couldn’t before, like tracking flight prices, giving directions and providing sameday updates on traffic to airports.
Anyone vaguely familiar with other personal virtual assistants, like Alexa from Amazon or Siri from Apple, knows that this technology is a work in progress. But I was impressed with how far Google Assistant and Google Home have come in a short period, and it’s not difficult to see them becoming a larger part of travelers’ lives in the near future.
The basics
The Google Assistant lives not only within the Google Home speaker, but also on Android phones and smartwatches.
It is capable of a wide range of tasks beyond answering users’ questions. You can use your voice to control your home’s thermostat, play shows and movies on your television or play music throughout your house.
The first and most important thing to know about Google Home is that while it speaks several human languages, it also has a language of its own.
Google recommends starting each interaction with “OK, Google” (“Hey, Google” works as well), which will prompt the speaker into receiving a query properly. It will light up and flash its signals when it’s ready.
Patience is also crucial. If at first you don’t succeed, it may not be because of what you’re asking, but because of how you’re asking it. For example: Human: “OK, Google, when does flight 3459 from Delta Air Lines arrive at LaGuardia Airport?”
Google Home: “Sorry, I’m not sure how to help. But my team’s helping me learn.”
Human: “OK, Google, when does Delta Air Lines flight 3459 arrive at LaGuardia Airport?”
Google Home: “Delta 3459 from Pittsburgh to New York City is delayed and arrives in 32 minutes.”
Preparing a trip
I found this stage of my mock journey the most helpful and practical. Whether you need help deciding where to go or when to go there, Google Home has ideas.
One of the neater tricks is asking it about what time of year is best to visit a city.
Human: “OK, Google, when is the best time to visit London?”
Google Home: “According to Visit London, autumn is a lovely time to visit London, as the weather is mild (11 to 15 degrees Celsius)” — 52 to 59 Fahrenheit — “and you can enjoy a variety of annual events, from Total Thames Festival to Halloween celebrations. To read more, look for the link in your Google Home App.”
On my iPhone’s Google Home app, there was a link to a visitlondon.com page with more details.
What I found to be the most useful feature was the finding and tracking of flights, which harnesses the power of Google Flights. This aspect gives Google Assistant an edge over its competition (Alexa has some flighttracking and -pricing features powered by Kayak but not as many).
Just ask it how much flights are to the city of your choice and give it your dates, and you’ll get the current price and be asked if you want email updates when the price changes.
An evolving sense of traffic
While you’re finishing packing, looking for your passport and checking (twice) to make sure the burners are off, you can get a quick update on how long it might take to get to the airport.
This sense of traffic is not something Google Home had when it first came out, an example of its evolving capabilities. Before long you will also be able to book a car to the airport via voice, as the company says hands-free calls will be an option in the coming months.
But when asking the assistant for directions, you do not yet get the detail you would if you were searching on Google Maps. When I asked Google Home how to get to LaGuardia, it gave me only a general idea: “via 77th Street and Grand Central Parkway.”
Similarly, if you’re trying to get from Point A to Point B once you’re in your destination city, Google Assistant gives you basic information, but it defaults to car directions, so you must specify how you want to get there.
The bottom line
This technology is still in its early stages, so unless you’re already using Google Home as part of your daily routine, chatting with it is more of a fun thing for travelers to experiment with than a replacement for what you would normally use to help plan a trip. But the foundation is strong and its potential is exciting, and, as Google Home will sometimes tell you when it’s stumped, it’s “learning more every day.”