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SEMANTIC TECHNOLOGY AND THE OPENTRAVEL ALLIANCE

The OpenTravel Semantic Search Support in OpenTravel Car Rental Schema Project

March 2011

What is Semantic Technology?

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Semantic technology adds meaning to data on the web to enable machines to understand, reason about and share data
Understand: this is a travelers itinerary Reason: travel itineraries show booked reservations this traveler has a booked reservation Share: Trip Plan is the same as Itinerary

Semantics use ontologies formal representations of concepts (e.g., a car reservation)

Semantic Web standards are provided by W3C (RDF, RDFS, OWL)

Why Semantics?
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The whole is greater than the sum of the parts

Chevy Cruze $34.95 / day

J K

Sharing. Common ontologies enable business rules to work between and among disparate partner relationships, obviating the need for one-off exchanges of structured data Description. Semantic metadata enables members to universally self-describe offerings to search engines and other value-added intermediaries Classification. Ontologies allow the creation of synthetic categories to respond to customer-oriented views of offerings across suppliers (Bargain Shopper = do not offer first class or premium car / hotel) Inference. Semantics enables inferences across partners; e.g., if the airline tells hotel that Sue is Joes daughter, and hotel knows that Joe is married to Kate, hotel can know that Sue is Kates daughter.

What are Some Benefits to OpenTravel Members?

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Better governance of OpenTravel messages, capitalizing on OpenTravel 2.0 business objects, providing a consistent vocabulary while eliminating redundancy, improving interchange and limiting error providing much more flexibility in messaging than exists today. Better search optimization and leverage through web search engines like Google and Yahoo, providing more relevant, high value results Better marketing, CRM and analytics, providing members with the ability to more closely match customer preferences and profiles, and to brand supplier services in such as way as to distinguish them from commodity-oriented portrayal Improved intra-domain and cross-domain search functionality and analytics, providing more powerful and flexible user searching and product configuration.

All Travel Verticals Can Benefit

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Although the initial scope of this project is limited to a Car Ontology

and associated OpenTravel 2.0 Semantic Search Business Objects/Type Library and enhancements to OpenTravel 1.0 Car schema

This project will provide a foundation for other travel verticals that are facing the same challenge.

How Can Semantics Be Used?

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Today, travel providers are already pursuing trading partner objectives that semantics facilitate Just as with messaging schema, ontologies provide economies of scale and interoperability
For

example, merchandising ancillary services and in search

How Can it Be Used: Merchandising

7 Attribute 1 Attribute 2 Leg Room Attribute 4 Attribute 5 Attribute 5 On-Off Access Attribute 7 Attribute 8 Attribute 9 Media Options Attribute 11 Attribute 12 Meal Options Attribute 14 Attribute 15 Time of Day Attribute 17 Attribute 18 Distance to Gate Attribute 20 Attribute 21 Flight Characteristics Attribute N

ComfortOriented Flight

How Can it Be Used: Search Enhancement

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Use search engines as a front door to transaction Dramatically increase relevance by inclusion of more meaningful, synonymic tags Enrich search results, adding ratings, video, prices, avails, amenities, locality etc.

How Can it Be Used: Ancillary & Cross-sell

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Business Trip w/ Family 2 adults 2 children < 10 yrs 1st class Member OnePass + Avis Premier 3rd time to Orlando Residence Zip Code 10011 3 bags

Other Use Cases from Project Proposal (1/3)

(illustrating supplier adoption of and integration with the semantic technology)
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Airline reservation using synthetic categories.

An airline might like to provide certain of its customers with flight availabilities optimized for and based on implicit and explicit customer preferences. For example, for certain groups of frequent flyers, the airline might want to enable the user to search for comfort-oriented flight availabilities. A comfort-oriented flight might be defined as one that provides maximal leg room, easiest on-off access, better in-flight multi-media and computer options, meal options, more convenient time-of-day departure and arrival and smoother flight characteristics. By representing the airplane and its characteristics as part of a search, an ontology and its associated reasoner provide the ability to classify particular airplanes and flights for properties that meet these criteria and to display availabilities accordingly. One can imagine similar synthetic constructs, such as easiest connections (using logic to identify the most generous layovers between flights), commuter-friendly departures or arrivals, disability-friendly flights (departing from near-in gates). More broadly, an airline might wish to provide complete trip packages, through its car, hotel and ancillary service partners, that are economic, thrilling, romantic and the like, based on the properties of each itinerary segment type.

Other Use Cases from Project Proposal (2/3)

(illustrating supplier adoption of and integration with the semantic technology)
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Search Engine.

A person looking to book a hotel room for a business or pleasure trip to London enters a search query for four star hotels in London near the Tower Bridge. The search engine looks for hotel business type and review mid-size luxury car with a review of four stars. An hotelier website page, suitably marked-up with RDFa or microformat information conforming to the search engine taxonomies, is found bearing these tags. The search engine presents the page URL in its search list, together with associated star-markings and review references. The shopper clicks through to the hotelier offering page to select and book the room.

Other Use Cases from Project Proposal (3/3)

(illustrating supplier adoption of and integration with the semantic technology)
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Ancillary Upsell.

A traveler indicates to a supplier (or suppliers) that she is traveling on business for her 3 day trip, but that her spouse and 2 children are accompanying her. The supplier identifies this as a business-with-family trip and through the involvement of partner companies offers the traveler the option to rent a minivan, to purchase tickets for the zoo and local family-oriented events, rent mobile phones for use by the children, make reservations at family-friendly restaurants and other suitable accommodations. A different, solo quick-trip traveler books a flight to Orlando for two days but fails to reserve a car the supplier provides a cost estimate of the price differential between a taxi and car rental between the airport and the hotel. Finally, yet another traveler indicates that the purpose of their leisure trip is to attend the US Open Tennis Tournament. Offers are made for additional ticket purchases, pre-paid parking or bus transportation to the event, and dinner reservations local to the event.

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Whats Next?
1. 2. 3. 4.

Use of Standards Analyze and Enhance Ontology Couple the Ontology and 2.0 Business Objects Complete 2.0 Car Rental Usage Profile

1. Determine Use of Standards

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Determine how standards will be used with OpenTravel 2.0 car rental business objects Review of existing semantic web standards will include, but is not limited to:
Resource

Description Framework (RDF) and RDFa, Web Ontology Language (OWL), SPARQL Query Language, Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) and equivalents, and Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML).

2. Analyze and Enhance Existing Ontology

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Use initial Car Rental ontology donated from Avis/Budget Review the ontology and make modifications to suit their collective business requirements. Establish naming and namespace conventions, policies for change management and other conventions governing ontology development and maintenance.

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3. Couple Ontology with OpenTravel 2.0 business object schema

Create OpenTravel 2.0 Car business objects that support the classes, roles and restrictions in the Car Rental ontology

for inclusion in Car Search, Availability and Notification schemas.

Relate tags and associated content of select (existing 1.0) Car messages to elements in the Car ontology and vice versa Extract tags and associated content from select Car messages and convert to 2.0 business objects, verifying validity with the Car Rental ontology Interpret queries containing terms defined by the ontology. Translate and decompose these for resolution against existing databases, application services and the ontology.

4. Complete OpenTravel 2.0 Car Rental Usage Profile

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Create a Car Rental Semantic Search Usage Profile to be distributed with the 2.0 business object library and Car Rental ontology Per OpenTravel guidelines, this Usage Profile will include:

A business level description (with use cases) that explain the benefits of implementing Car Rental semantic search A glossary of standardized terms and definitions Semantic search business object dictionaries; Sample WSDL and schema for implementing Car Rental semantic search objects Guidelines and processes for OpenTravel implementers that want to enhance Car Rental semantic search business objects and/or the Car Rental ontology

Join us at the 2011 North American Advisory Forum in Las Vegas, Nevada (April 25-28, 2011)
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New Projects Roundtable

Wednesday April 27th 9am to 10:30am Thursday April 28th 8:30am to 10:30am

Semantic Search / Ontology Project Working Meeting

Open to any attendee Agenda/Registration at www.OpenTravel.org or at http://us.ootoweb.com/opentraveladvisoryforum

Early bird discount through Friday March 25, 2011

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THANK YOU

Contact Us: Bonnie Lowell, Specification Manager Bonnie.Lowell@opentravel.org Valyn Perini, Executive Director Valyn.Perni@opentravel.org