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Based on: Fensel, A., Akbar, Z., Toma, I., Fensel., D. "Bringing Online Visibility to Hotels with Schema.org and Multi-channel Communication", In Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2016: Proceedings of the International Conference in Bilbao (ENTER’16), Spain, February

2-5, 2016, pp. 3-16, Springer (2016).

Anna Fensel, Zaenal Akbar, Ioan Toma, and Dieter Fensel

© Copyright 2016 | www.sti-innsbruck.at

08.07.2016

LDCT project workshop @ University of Montpellier, France

Online Marketing with Schema.org and

Multi-channel Communication

Outline

• Introduction

• The Challenge

• The Solution

• Result / Evaluation

• Conclusion and Future Work

Introduction

What travel consumers do online 1:

1ETOA, ”The New Online Travel Consumer”, 2014, http://www.etoa.org

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

Introduction

Sources of online visibility:

1.Search Engines

2.Multiple Online Communication Channelsi.Social Networking

ii.Video & Photo Sharing iii.Travel Reviews iv.Booking Sitesv....

Introduction

ObjectiveTo 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?

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

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

1. How to increase online visibility of hotels on search engines?

2. How to increase online visibility of hotels on multiple online communication channels?

Challenges

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

Hotel Kaysers – semantic present

– Rich Snippets

Knowledge Graph –

Semantic Annotations

Kaysers Hotel:• 268 pages/sub-pages were annotated• three different languages (German, English, and French)

Semantic Annotations

1. How to increase online visibility of hotels on search engines?

2. How to increase online visibility of hotels on multiple online communication channels?

Challenges

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

Multi-channel Online Communication Tool

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

Multi-channel Online Communication Tool

Post Suggestions –

Multi-channel Online Communication Tool

Publication Calendar –

Multi-channel Online Communication Tool

Publication Statistics –

Evaluation Setup

• Measurements:1.Traffic to website2.Traffic to website originated from social media3.Work time spent by the hotel on social media management

• Tools:1.Google Analytics

2.Interview

Evaluation (1)

Evaluation period – July - August 2015:

Traffic to website has increased:

Sessions Users Pageviews 25% 21% 16%

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%)

Evaluation (3)

Work time spent by the hotel on social media management:

• Before deployment ≈ 2.5 hours / day

• After deployment ≈ 1 hour / day

Conclusion

• We utilise semantic web technologies in touristic sectori. to increase the findability of a website through semantic

annotationii. to integrate the distributed and isolated content sources by

collecting the annotated contentiii. 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

Extension: TourPack: On-demand Data-driven Production of Touristic Service Packages (http://tourpack.sti2.at)

Goal: to develop a linked data empowered system for touristic service packing.

Motivation includes: • simplification of booking of multiple

services, • ease of online publishing of these services

by touristic service providers.

Implementation is to: • integrate several sources of data, structured

and unstructured (e.g. in schema.org), • process them to be used in the touristic

domain, • intelligently bundle the underlying services

in packages based on tourists’ needs/wishes,

• make them bookable via social media and mobile devices.

Coordinated by: Partners: TourPack project is supported by FFG, 2nd call of “IKT der Zukunft” funding line. Project duration: 2014-2016.

Anna Fensel

Extension: 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

• Generated out of package offer modeled with schema.org

• Published together with a direct booking link

• Content adaptation for the social media platform and language

Image credit: Werner Kräutler

Extension: Data licensing

www.sti-innsbruck.at

Image from DALICC consortium: FH St Pölten, STI Innsbruck, WU Wien, Semantic Web Company, Höhne i. d. Maur & Partner Rechtsanwälte OG

Data licensing is still complicated, formats for automated licensed data use are under-defined.Semantic standards for license development are in progress e.g. ODRL, RightsML.A new project delivering a support system for data licensing is to start in November 2016 under FFG Ikt der Zukunft call, named DALICC: Data Licences Clearance Center.

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.html6“... the theme of communication technology has become a decisive factor in the

creation of value ...”, M. Gratzer (Ö HV), 2016

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