Travel Semantics

Snippets, Semantics and the Web 3.0: structured and meaningful Data in

Online Travel Marketing and Technology

Dr. Lars Göhler

o Wilhelm von Humboldt: „Language makes

infinite use of finite means.”

o Tim Berners Lee: "The goal of the

semantic web is to express real life.”

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.

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

For us: a beautiful website

For a machine like Google:

a chaos of information

Photo: Claudia Hautumm / pixelio.de

What Machines do now:

Comparing Structures

structure 1 structure 2

apache apache ? Webserver? American Indian? Helicopter? Car?

Example:

What machines can do:

comparing structures with reference to an ontology

Structure 1 Structure 2

concept

sign and

syntax

level

meaning,

ontology

level

Semantic Approach:

Example

apache apache

Concept

of a web-

server

sign and

syntax

level

meaning,

ontology

level

reality

Semantics can do more:

Understanding Relations

Yucatan Paul likes to travel to

…and also Complex Relations,

even between Ontologies

source: linkeddata.org

Types of references:

low semantics

o Confined to logical HTML-tags as <nav>,

<article> or <footer>

o Mainly self-referencial

o Marking the structure of a website, hardly

any external reference

o Encouraged in HTML5, but this standard is

more about the capacity to include

semantic markup into HTML-code

Types of References 1:

Self Reference (HTML 5)

Hi, I‘m a navigation!

Image source: expedia.de

Types of references 2:

External linked Reference

Hi, I‘m an aggregate offer

according to schema.org!

Image source: weg.de

Types of references 2:

medium semantics

o Reference to an external established source or

ontology as schema.org or data-vocabulary.org

o Uses simple rdf or microdata

o advantages: public, accepted by most search

engines, well known, easy to interpret, honoured

by search engines by „rich snippets“

o disatvantages: no subject specific, limited to the

available vocabulary, limited capacity to express

relations

Types of references 3:

full semantic reference

Hi, I could be a complex hospitality offer

according to an travel ontology xxx

(that does not yet exist).

Image source: weg.de

Types of References 3:

Full Semantics

o external linked reference to a complex

ontology

o Uses RDF(a) instead of microdata or

microformats

o able to express various relationships in the

form of triples

o difficulty: presupposes ontologies that are

widely accepted

Use of semantic Technologies:

Search

o If linked to an ontology we can give

expressions a unequivocal meaning

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

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.“

Use of semantic Technologies:

Internal Search

yourvisit.com (search technology by Yahoo)

zaptravel.com

Use of semantic technologies:

Search with Fact-Finder

neckermann-urlaubswelt.de (using search technology from fact-finder.de)

answer:

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 fare greater conversion rate.

Status:

Semantic Markup in Travel Websites

o Few metadata are used by almost every

company, describing the company and the

breadcrumb

o Germany: weg.de and some sites of unister

travel use of microdata for single offers

o More complex markup, e.g. references to Good

Relations is hardly to find.

o Résumé: Almost no systematic metadata

markup is applied in most travel websites.

Status:

External Search

o Almost all search engines, especially Google „honour“

semantically marked offers by a special presentation,

called „snippet“ (search for Reise Antalya).

Use of semantic search technologies 2:

Knowledge Graph Knowledge graph is a knowledge base built by Google to enhance search

results by semantic search information using several sources

Perspectives:

Public 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 enginges to

„understand“ their content

o contribute to information systems as knowledge

graph etc.

Perspectives:

Social Media

o Semantic technologies can interact mit

social media

o It is technically possible to search for the

„hotel in Paris with the best rating“

o Most social media organize community

data with semantic technologies, e.g.

Facebooks open or social graph and even

Google+

Status:

Destination Marketing

o Most destinations, places or offices are

registered in google maps/places

o destinations start to discover the

opportunities of publishing geodata

o Hardly any geodata are linked to other

ressources (booking, events, associated

offers, packages)

Perspectives:

Destination Marketing

o Publication of semantic data for destination

marketing in an universally accepted form

o Publishing Metadata for tourist services and

facilities

o Link these data to each other and to other data

of transport, flights, events etc.

o Mapping those data in applications using Open

Street Map, Google Maps, Earth etc.

o Creating special maps for tourist destinations

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)

Perspectives:

Mobile Solutions

o Use of location based services 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 and semantic search

o Regions and destinations can create

own travel companions with many

locally relevant data

Status and perspectives:

Semantic Webservices

o Many tourist and travel companies (Sabre, Amadeus etc.) offer numerous Webservices to which any agent with the proper interface can connect

o Most of these Webservices are non-semantic, some of them use the OTA Vocabulary

o Perspectives: Semantic Webservices could offer a far more flexible search and offering system, even connecting more than one service. No special interface specifications needed, any semantic agent can connect

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: small ontology, with hierarchy and

nesting possibilities, no triples, no extensive use

of relations

o Good Relations: web vocabulary for

e-commerce; the only complex public ontology

supported by Google, and Yahoo

Available Solutions:

Open Travel Vocabulary (XML-based)

Perspectives:

Internal Solutions

o Creating company-intern ontology for travel and tourism would have positive effects to all search and data mining functions

o Can be extended to an internal semantic data organization as a means to coordinate all internal data formats

o Internal ontologies can be mapped/related to accepted external ontologies

Perspectives:

Infrastructural Solutions o Creating an widely accepted (leightweight) public

ontology for travel and tourism with a good hierarchy 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.

Perspectives:

Strategic Questions

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 on 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?

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