Fandango Brings Movie Ticket Buying To Google Assistant

Google has announced a partnership with Fandango that allows users to purchase tickets through Google Assistant.

“We worked with Fandango so you can buy tickets to the movies using your voice — just say ‘buy tickets’ once you’ve decided which movie to see,” Lilian Rincon, product management director of Google Assistant, said in a press release. “Or if you already have a movie in mind, you can just say ‘Hey Google, get me tickets for … ’ and insert the name of the movie you want to see.”

You can also use the feature to buy advance tickets for upcoming movies. According to The Verge, when using the prompts with Assistant on your phone, it pulls up a selection of theaters with available times.

The functionality will work on a user’s smartphone as well as on speakers like Google Home. When it’s done from Google Home, however, the process will be sent over to your smartphone once you’ve picked a movie and showtime.

“At Fandango, we’ve built ticketing innovations for a wide variety of mobile, social, AI bot and voice-activated platforms, so we can super-serve moviegoers at scale, wherever and whenever they are thinking about and planning a trip to the movies,” said Fandango president Paul Yanover in a statement, according to Variety. “We’re thrilled to be working with Google once again, bringing movie discovery and ticketing capabilities to users on the Google Assistant, and giving them access to the widest choice of theaters from their living room or while on the go.”

On May 3, Google announced that its Google Assistant is now connected to more than 5,000 devices in the home.

In a blog post, Michele Turner, director of the Smart Home Ecosystem at Google, said that number is up from 1,500 in January.

“With the Google Assistant, we’re working to make this experience a lot better, so you can easily control all the devices and appliances in your home with just your voice. Over the past year, we’ve made great progress ensuring that the Google Assistant can work with all types of connected devices, and now every major device brand works with the Assistant in the U.S,” Turner wrote in the blog post.