This document discusses using semantic annotations and a multi-channel communication tool to improve the online visibility of hotels. It describes annotating the Kaysers Hotel website with Schema.org to increase search engine visibility and ranking. A tool was also used to automatically distribute relevant content to multiple social media channels. After implementation, the hotel's website traffic increased 20% and time spent on social media marketing decreased 60%. Semantic technologies improved findability and integrated distributed content sources to better promote hotels online.

1. Bringing online visibility to hotels
with schema.org and multi-channel
communication
Anna Fensel, Zaenal Akbar, Ioan Toma, and Dieter Fensel
Semantic Technology Institute (STI) Innsbruck
University of Innsbruck, Austria
{firstname.lastname}@sti2.at
http://www.sti-innsbruck.at
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2. Outline
• Introduction
• The Challenge
• The Solution
• Result / Evaluation
• Conclusion and Future Work
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3. Introduction
What travel consumers do online 1:
1ETOA, ”The New Online Travel Consumer”, 2014, http://www.etoa.org
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4. Introduction
Online sources of travel inspiration 2:
1. Social networking, video, or photo sites (83 %)
2. Search engines (61 %)
3. Travel review sites/apps (42 %)
4. Destination-specific sites/apps (31 %)
5. Daily Deal sites/apps (27 %)
2Think with Google, ”The 2014 Traveler’s Road to Decision”, 2014,
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com
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5. Introduction
Sources of online visibility:
1. Search Engines
2. Multiple Online Communication Channels
i. Social Networking
ii. Video & Photo Sharing
iii. Travel Reviews
iv. Booking Sites
v. ...
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6. Introduction
Objective
To help touristic businesses (e.g. hoteliers) to have a strong
online presence:
• higher online visibility – positive impact on marketing
success – leads to increased sales
Challenges:
1. How to increase online visibility of hotels on Search
Engines?
2. How to increase online visibility of hotels on Multiple Online
Communication Channels?
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7. Use Case: Kaysers Hotel
A four-star ( ) hotel:
• Located in Mieming,
province of Tyrol, Austria
• 48 rooms
• Offers: golf, skiing, tennis,
hiking, city trips, etc.
Had a limited online presence:
• its own website 3
• booking platforms
• very limited use of social media, mainly Facebook
3http://www.kaysers.at
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8. Use Case: TVB Innsbruck
One of the biggest tourism boards
in Austria
• The 2nd biggest TVB in Tyrol
• The 3rd biggest city destination
in Austria
Online marketing activities (2014)
• Executed by a team of editors
and a blogger network
• 5 websites / mobile apps for iPhone and Android / 6 social media
channels / 9 languages
Improve the online visibility – suitable for content sources
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9. Challenges
1. How to increase online visibility of hotels on Search
Engines?
2. How to increase online visibility of hotels on Multiple Online
Communication Channels?
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10. Semantic Annotations
Semantic annotations:
• the process of marking-up resources with metadata
• computer-understandable descriptions of resources
Schema.org:
• collection of shared vocabularies to
mark-up web pages
• can be understood by the major search
engines
• index your content better, present it
more prominently in search results
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11. Semantic Annotations
– Rich Snippets
Knowledge Graph –
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12. Semantic Annotations
Kaysers Hotel:
• 268 pages/sub-pages were annotated
• three different languages (German, English, and French)
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13. Semantic Annotations
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14. Challenges
1. How to increase online visibility of hotels on Search
Engines?
2. How to increase online visibility of hotels on Multiple Online
Communication Channels?
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15. Multi-channel Challenges
• Scalability
• The overwhelming amount of available communication
channels
• Costs
• Social media experts needed to handle communication
channels
• Domain personalization
• Adaptation, alignment and definition of the content for
several channels
• Bilateral communication
• Feedback and engagement / Reputation management
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16. Multi-channel Online Communication Tool
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17. Multi-channel Online Communication Tool
• A spin-off company of the University of Innsbruck, founded
in 2015 4
• Focus – social media management & marketing
• Innovative technologies – semantic web technology and
rule-based systems
4http://onlim.com
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18. Multi-channel Online Communication Tool
Post Suggestions –
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19. Multi-channel Online Communication Tool
Publication Calendar –
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20. Multi-channel Online Communication Tool
Publication Statistics –
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21. Evaluation Setup
• Measurements:
1. Traffic to website
2. Traffic to website originated from social media
3. Work time spent by the hotel on social media management
• Tools:
1. Google Analytics
2. Interview
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22. Evaluation (1)
Evaluation period – July - August 2015:
Traffic to website has increased:
Sessions Users Pageviews
25% 21% 16%
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23. Evaluation (2)
Traffic to website originated from social media:
• Traffic from Facebook increased by 40%
• 92% of tweets were disseminated through the tool
• Bring more visitors from Twitter (100%)
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24. Evaluation (3)
Work time spent by the hotel on social media management:
• Before deployment ≈ 2.5 hours / day
• After deployment ≈ 1 hour / day
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25. Conclusion
• We utilise semantic web technologies in touristic sector
i. to increase the findability of a website through semantic
annotation
ii. to integrate the distributed and isolated content sources by
collecting the annotated content
iii. to distribute the collected content to multiple social media
channels (semi-automatically)
• Evaluation on the Kaysers Hotel:
i. Website traffic has increased by 20%
ii. Up to 40% growth of the social media traffic referrals
iii. Up to 60% decrease of worktime spent in social media
marketing
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26. Future Work
• Hotels extension of Schema.org 5
• Date reuse from third-party sources, appropriate licensing
models would need to be found
• Applying semantic web technologies in various aspects of
(multi-channel) online communication 6
5http://sdo-hotels.appspot.com/docs/hotels.html
6“... the theme of communication technology has become a decisive factor in the
creation of value ...”, M. Gratzer ( ¨OHV), 2016
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27. Thank You
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