This document discusses using semantic annotations and a multi-channel communication tool to increase the online visibility and marketing success of hotels. It describes how the Kaysers Hotel semantically annotated its website pages in multiple languages to improve search engine optimization. A multi-channel communication tool was also used to suggest and publish social media posts for the hotel across different channels. An evaluation found the hotel's website traffic and traffic from social media increased while time spent on social media marketing decreased. Future work could involve extending semantic standards for the hotel domain and applying semantic technologies more broadly to online communication.

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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

2. Outline
• Introduction
• The Challenge
• The Solution
• Result / Evaluation
• Conclusion and Future Work

3. Introduction
What travel consumers do online 1:
1ETOA, ”The New Online Travel Consumer”, 2014, http://www.etoa.org

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

5. Introduction
Sources of online visibility:
1.SearchEngines
2.Multiple Online Communication Channels
i.Social Networking
ii.Video & Photo Sharing
iii.Travel Reviews
iv.Booking Sites
v....

6. Introduction
Objective
Tohelp 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?

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

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

9. 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

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

11. Hotel Kaysers – semantic
present
– Rich Snippets
Knowledge Graph –

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

13. Semantic Annotations

14. 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

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

16. Multi-channel Online
Communication Tool

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

18. Multi-channel Online Communication Tool
Post Suggestions –

19. Multi-channel Online
Communication Tool
Publication Calendar –

20. Multi-channel Online
Communication Tool
Publication Statistics –

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

22. Evaluation (1)
Evaluation period – July - August 2015:
Traffic to website has increased:
Sessions Users Pageviews
25% 21% 16%

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%)

24. Evaluation (3)
Work time spent by the hotel on social media management:
• Before deployment ≈ 2.5 hours /day
• After deployment ≈ 1 hour / day

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

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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.

29. 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 (ÖHV), 2016

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