Semanic technologies are used increasingly in online tourism and travel industry. The presentation held at the ITB Berlin at the 6th of March illustrates some semantic technologies and gives information on their status and perspectives. Main application fields in semantics is management of big data, search engine optimization (seo), advertising, internal search technology, mobile applications and destination management. More on travel semantics: www.travel-semantics.com

1. Travel Semantics
Snippets, Semantics and the Web 3.0:
structured and meaningful Data in
Online Travel Marketing and
Technology
Dr. Lars Göhler

2. o Wilhelm von Humboldt: „Language makes
infinite use of finite means.”
o Tim Berners Lee: "A new form of Web
content that is meaningful to computers
will unleash a revolution of new
possibilities.”

3. Semantic Technologies:
The Situation
o Big and inceasing unstructured web data in
travel and tourism offering and advertising make
a sensible mining, search and selection almost
impossible.
o Structured data could make classification and
ordering much easier.
o With the application of semantic methods, those
data can even be „understood“ by machines and
complex results yet unexpected can be
produced.

4. Tim Berners Lee:
Creator of the World Wide Web
„Hi, I invented the world
wide web!“
„It can be much more
powerful as the
semantic web.“
„Link your data, give
them a structure and
a meaning!“
Photographer: John S. and
James L. Knight Foundation

5. For us:
a meaningful website

6. For a machine like Google:
a chaos of information
Photo: Claudia Hautumm / pixelio.de

7. What Machines do now:
Comparing Structures
structure 1 structure 2
apache apache
?Webserver? American Indian? Helicopter? Car?
Example:

8. What machines can do:
comparing structures with reference to an ontology
Structure 1 Structure 2
concept
sign and
syntax
level
meaning,
ontology
level

9. Semantic Approach:
Example
apache apache
Concept
of a web-
server
sign and
syntax
level
meaning,
ontology
level
reality

10. Semantics can do more:
Understanding Relations
YucatanPaul
likes to travel to

11. …and also complex relations,
even between Ontologies
source: linkeddata.org

12. The Semantic Web was „dead“ the last 15 years:
Why should it live now?
1. The big search engine providers
(Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Yandex)
want it
2. They use it for internal data organization
and mining (Google Graph, Facebook
Graph, classified information etc.)
3. It is quite useful for mobile devices
4. It makes sense ;-)

13. Semantic Technologies in Tourism and Travel:
Fields of application
o Search and data mining, especially of big data
o Mediation between several data formats
o Marketing (SEO) and online public relations
o Destination marketing e.g. by linked geodata
o Natural Language recognition and –
interpretation, e.g. on mobile devices
o Knowledge representation
o Interaction with/between social media

14. Tim Berners Lee‘s proposal:
5 star deployment scheme
Source: 5stardata.info

15. Status:
Semantic Markup in Travel Websites
o Few metadata are used by almost every website,
describing the company and/or the breadcrumb:
tripadvisor, priceline.com, opodo.de, expedia.de,
travel24.de, trivago.de
o Proprietary markup (Facebook, Twitter): booking.com,
expedia.com
o General markup of single offers: Yahoo Travel,
Expedia.com (geo-coordinates) Germany: weg.de and
some sites of unister travel use microdata
o More complex or travel-specific markup, e.g.
references to Good Relations is hardly to find.
o Résumé: Almost no systematic metadata markup is
applied in most travel websites.

16. Status:
External Search
o Almost all search engines, especially Google „honour“
semantically marked offers by a special presentation,
called „snippet“ (search for journey mexico).

17. Enhanced search results:
Display in Yahoo!
source: de.slideshare.net/ptarjan/semantic-searchmonkey

18. Enhanced search results:
Googles own listing for „cinema london“

19. Perspectives:
External Search, SEO
o enhance search engine presence by marking up
offers with metadata
o enable search engines to classify data as place,
offer, event, transportation, accommodation etc.
o describe media as videos and photos by
metadata to enable search engines to
„understand“ their content
o contribute to information systems as knowledge
graph etc.

20. Use of semantic Technologies:
Internal Search
o Users can search for journey in everyday
language:
o We can link synonyms to the same meaning and
homonyms can be attributed a special meaning.
o We can express relationships between those
meanings
o Search algorithms can react on complex
requests: „I want a best rated hotel in the center
of Olso with a strong wifi connection and a
conference room.“

21. Use of semantic Technologies:
Internal Search
yourvisit.com of Expedia
zaptravel.com

22. Use of semantic technologies:
Search with Fact-Finder
neckermann-urlaubswelt.de (using search technology from fact-finder.de)
answer:

23. Perspectives:
Internal semantic Search
o Extending the ability of Websites and mobile
devices to understand complex queries in
natural language
o Acoustic speech recognition a semantic basis,
especially for mobile devices
o Making travel systems understand complex
requirements, e.g. „family trip“, „golf journey“, not
only time, place and price.
o It is said, that semantic searches have a far
greater conversion rate.

24. Status:
Mobile Solutions
o Tripit (tripit.com): online/mobile travel itinery
planner that uses semantic technologies
o Trust Score (trustyou.com) big data online
reputation management: collects hotel
reviews from many web sources on a
semantic basis
o Desti is a iPad app: semantic search travel
companion (yet only available for iOS)
o Google Now and Siri develop semantic
interpretation of voice recognition

25. Perspectives:
Mobile Solutions
o Use of location based services with
semantics in tourism and travel is still in
its infancy
o Native and WebApps can use geodata
and mix them with social media, events,
user rating by semantic techniques
o Regions and destinations can create
own travel companions with many
locally relevant data

26. Status:
Infrastructural Solutions
o The Open Travel Alliance created a complex
structured system of travel vocabulary, but only
partly transferred to an ontology.
o schema.org: general ontology for seach
engines, with hierarchy and nesting possibilities,
no extensive use of relations, no linked data
required
o Good Relations: web vocabulary for
e-commerce; complex public ontology supported
by Google, and Yahoo

27. Available Solutions:
Open Travel Vocabulary (XML-based)

28. Perspective:
XML Schema of OTA
„For those companies already using XML Schema,
the addition of Ontology and semantics is the
next logical step for improvements to the user
experience and relevance of results, both within
the booking engine and on search engines like
Bing, Google and Yahoo!. This technology is
already being applied in many ways, by many
sectors particularly Retail, Health Care, and
Government, and is being deployed in Finance
and Entertainment.“ (http://thematix.com/xml-
travel-schema-ontology 2012)

29. Perspectives:
Infrastructural Solutions
o Creating an widely accepted public ontology for
travel and tourism, that is easy to use, would
have advantages for the user, for companies
and for third party applications
o Every application can use the published public
data without a special interface: the data could
get a wider recognition
o Can yield much more appropriate search results
in search engines
o If computers can „understand“ search queries
and available data alike, they can construe
complex answers and offers.

30. Perspectives:
Strategic Questions 1
o Should companies develop own ontologies
or concentrate on using established ones?
o Is it better to follow the major search
engines or develop an own strategy, say,
oriented at open standards?
o Will semantic technology be an additional
system to manage heterogenous data or
does it make sense to develop it as a core
technology?

31. Perspectives:
Strategic Questions 2
o Ramanathan V. Guha, Google: “Schema.org
was not designed as the only vocabulary. It has
no intention of being the vocabulary, it is our
vocabulary. It is intended of work alongside of
many vocabularies.”
(videolectures.net/iswc2013_guha_tunnel)
o How could a travel ontology look like:
leightweight, comprehensive, fragmented?
o Which technique could it use: microdata, RDFa
Lite, RDFa full?

32. If you are afraid to forget your plans:
use the 5 star cup
Source: w3c.org

33. Presentation held at the ITB Berlin 2014
by Lars Göhler
on March 6th, at 11.30 – 12:00
at the Hall 6.1, eTravel Lab
www.eastpress.de
Further information on travel semantics on:
www.travel-semantics.com
Thanks to advice and cooperation of
www.leipzig-data.de, Leipzig University