The document summarizes the TourPack project, which aims to build a linked data system for packaging and disseminating touristic services. Key goals are to integrate information from multiple sources, automatically generate optimized travel packages, and efficiently publish and book packages through multiple channels like social media and mobile apps. The technical approach involves semantic annotation of services using schemas like Schema.org to enable automatic clustering, packaging and publishing of offers across different platforms. Expected outcomes include scalable multi-channel communication solutions and methods for online interactions and booking of tourism services.

1. www.sti-innsbruck.at© Copyright 2015 STI INNSBRUCK www.sti-innsbruck.at
TourPack: Packaging and Disseminating Touristic
Services with Linked Data and Semantics
Anna Fensel, Elias Kärle, Ioan Toma
anna.fensel@sti2.at, elias.kaerle@sti2.at, ioan.toma@sti2.at
1st International Workshop on Semantic Technologies (IWOST),
Changchun, China,
11 March 2015

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Outine
• About TourPack
• Motivation
• Use Case Example
• Project Goals
• Technical Innovation
• Technical Details: Basing on schema.org & Regional Contents
• Further Expected Outcomes
• Background, Consortium and Extensions
• Contact and Follow us

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About
• TourPack builds a linked data -empowered system for touristic service
packaging.
• Integrating information from multiple sources and systems employing linked
data as a global information integration platform, and mining from the
depths of the “closed” data, the touristic service package production system
would cater to creating the most optimal travel experience for the traveler.
• Further, the service packages are to be efficiently published and made
bookable to the end consumers via intelligently selected most suitable
communication and booking channels: especially the ICT channels with
rapidly growing user audiences, such as the social media and the mobile
apps.
• Project duration: 1 July 2014 – 31 December 2016

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Motivation
The social media revolution has made this job for the organisations – as well as
for their customers when spending time on learning about service offers - much
more complicated, because:
• the number of channels has grown exponentially,
• the communication has changed from a mostly unilateral "push" mode (one
speaker, many listeners) to an increasingly fully bilateral communication,
where individual stakeholders (e.g. customers) expect one-to-one
communication with the organization, and the expected speed of reaction is
shrunk to almost real-time, and
• the contents of communication is becoming increasingly granular and more
dependent upon the identity of the receiver and the context of the
communication.
• Currently, there are more than 100 booking and 200 social media platforms
available on which the hotelier could be present.
• Utilizing the value of structured, linked, open and closed, big and small data.

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Use Case Example: Finding and Consuming the
Most Relevant Touristic Services on the Fly
A guest G enters the hotel for the first time. At the check-in desk the
receptionist introduces G to the newly launched smartphone app of the
hotel. G downloads the app in the free WiFi of the hotel and back in his/her
room he/she starts exploring the contents. In the "restaurants"-section of
the app she/he finds the menus of the day generated on the fly from linked
data of the available restaurants in the nearby, catering to the user’s food
preferences and dietary restrictions. Since she/he feels quite hungry
he/she makes a reservation for a certain preferred type of restaurant in the
area directly out of the app.
Illustration: Caroline Winklmair

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Project Goals
The major TourPack technical objectives are:
• design and implement a scalable online service packaging and
provisioning solution based on machine-processable semantics.
• deliver the technology for interacting with this multi-channel solution
through various and heterogeneous mobile channels.
• provide support in service packaging, such as accessing, interacting,
and value exchange (i.e., booking) of tourism services and their
combinations through this infrastructure, using linked data as a global
integration platform.
• validate and apply the TourPack research and development outcome in
pilots focusing on the booking of tourism services.
Overall aim: Being visible, scalable, and “on-demand” (vs. the current
manual labor and “one-size-fits-all” types of offers), when it comes to
touristic service offers marketing and booking

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Technical Innovation
We are to support automatic generation, clustering and
packaging of semantically annotated touristic service
offers from a variety of sources. More precisely, existing
information extraction, clustering and publishing is to be
adopted and extended in order to:
• obtain the extracted data in a Linked Data format,
(semi-)automatically associating metadata;
• generate service representations in Linked Data format
according to ontological models;
• interlink, cluster, package and provide services in an
automatic way;
• provide a semantic service and an online interface for
easy publishing and access to the above mentioned
functionalities.

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TourPack High Level Architecture
Mobile user
Social
media user

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Touristic Service Packaging on Social Media
• Generation and publishing of
posts suggesting other bookable
activities to do while traveling,
together with the hotel rooms
offer
• Published together with a direct
booking link
• Content adaptation for the social
media platform and language
Image credit: Werner Kräutler

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Regional Content Use
• Touristic associations and other sources have lots of regional
content helpful for generation of posts for hoteliers e.g. stories,
games, etc.
• That content is used to generate the posts
– in TourPack for Innsbruck and Salzburg

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We use Schema.org – what is it?
• Schema.org provides a collection of shared vocabularies.
• Launched in June 2011 by Bing, Goolge and Yahoo
• Yandex joins in November
• Purpose:
Create a common set of schemas for webmasters to mark-
up with structured data their websites.
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Web search on Web 1.0
• Question/Answer
– Until now….
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Web search on Web 2.0
• Now … Semantic Search
– (using the Knowledge graph)
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Web search on Web 3.0
• With accounts on Freebase, Wikipedia and social accounts
• And schema.org annotations in your web site …
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http://moz.com/ugc/i-became-an-entity-how-im-on-the-knowledge-graph
http://schema.org/Person

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Examples of annotated sites
• Examples of web sites annotated with Schema.org
• YELP (events, restaurants)
– http://www.yelp.com/
• Food.com (recipes)
– http://www.food.com/
• TVB Innsbruck (hotels, events)
– http://www.innsbruck.info/
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Examples of web sites annotated with
Schema.org
• YELP (events, restaurants)
– http://www.yelp.com/
• Food.com (recipes)
– http://www.food.com/
• Touristic association of Innsbruck (hotels, events)
– http://www.innsbruck.info
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Touristic association Innsbruck use case
• Started a collaboration in September of 2013 (STI & TVB Innsbruck)
• Strategies to enhance the visibility of their website and deal with the
multi-channel communication challenges.
– Semantic annotation in the website, blog
– Dissemination of content with Dacodi

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Schema.org for
 Restaurant, Cafes, Bars & Pubs, Sightseeing
• Name
• Map
• PostalAddress
o streetAddress
o addressCountry
o postalCode
o addressLocality
o telephone
o faxNumber

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Object type: http://schema.org/Restaurant
Name: Café-Restaurant Villa Blanka
Address:
Object type: http://schema.org/PostalAddress
Street address: Weiherburggasse 8
Address country: AT
Postal code: 6020
Address locality: Innsbruck
Telephone: +43 512 27 60 70
Example of Café-Restaurant Villa Blanka
Feratelcontent
Schema.org for

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Implementation of semantic annotation with a plugin (Feratel -> Typo3)
Schema.org for

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TVB Innsbruck: implementation
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http://blog.innsbruck.info/en/
http://www.innsbruck.info/en

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Schema.org for

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Expected Outcomes
Challenge Outcome
Multi-channel
communication
 Semantic based representation of content (ontology) in intuitive and
familiar terminology for tourist service providers.
 Scalable methods for separating and interweaving content and
communication channels, particularly, employing linked data as an
integration platform.
 Online multi-channel communication technical solution.
Online interactions  Formal communication pattern description mechanism as business
processes.
 Reusable set of communication patterns to structure the online
interactions for the tourism domain.
Service integration
and yield
management
 Integration of a booking engine with the necessary infrastructure for
tourism services to be directly bookable and configurable for yield
management and tailored to the preferences of the end consumers.
 A technique for enablement touristic service providers to annotate their
offers employing linked data for the subsequent multi-platform reuse.
Mobile service
provisioning
 Online mobile strategy definition for tourism organizations.
 Mobile toolbox for the integration of booking services for travel service
providers.
 Mobile framework and components for multi-channel and online
interactions management.

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Background
• Online Communications working group: http://oc.sti2.at
– Fensel, A., Toma, I., Garcia, J.-M., Stavrakantonakis, I., Fensel, D. "Enabling Customers
Engagement and Collaboration for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Ubiquitous Multi-
channel Ecosystems", Computers in Industry, Elsevier, 2014. ISSN: 0166-3615.
– Stavrakantonakis, I., Toma, I., Fensel, A., Fensel, D. “Bringing the Hotel Websites to their
Full Potential with Web 2.0 and 3.0: The Case of Austria”. In Proceedings of the 21th
International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Travel and
Tourism (ENTER2014), pp. 665-677, 21-24 January 2014, Dublin, Ireland.
– Toma, I., Stanciu, C.-V., Fensel, A., Stavrakantonakis, I., Fensel, D. "Improving the online
visibility of touristic service providers by using semantic annotations". In Proceedings of the
11th European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC'2014), 25-29 May 2014, Crete, Greece,
Springer-Verlag, LNCS (2014).
• Master thesis: Elias Kärle, Master thesis “An approach and implementation
for supporting multi-platform mobile service creation for businesses”,
January 2014, University of Innsbruck, Austria.
• See further, up-to-date publications at: http://oc.sti2.at/results/papers

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Consortium

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Extensions
• Start-up ONLIM – Online Communication and Marketing:
www.onlim.com
• Yearly Tourism Fast Forward event in Mayrhofen, Tyrol:
http://tourismfastforward.com

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Contact and Follow us
• Paper reference:
– Fensel, A., Kärle, E., Toma, I. "TourPack: Packaging and Disseminating Touristic Services with
Linked Data and Semantics". In Proceedings of the1st International Workshop on Semantic
Technologies (IWOST), CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol-1339, ISSN 1613-0073, pp. 43-54,
11-12 March 2015, Changchun, China.
• TourPack project coordinator - Anna Fensel: www.anna.fensel.com
• TourPack project website: http://tourpack.sti2.at
• Website (ONLIM): www.onlim.com
• Twitter (ONLIM): https://twitter.com/onlim_com
• Facebook (ONLIM):
https://www.facebook.com/pages/ONLIM/255769271295093
• LinkedIn (ONLIM): https://www.linkedin.com/company/onlim
•