[This article was originally published in Tnooz on August 1, 2012] A year ago, Google, Bing (Microsoft) and Yahoo announced Schema.org: a taxonomy that would allow webpages to self-describe their content. This, it was hoped, would help produce more accurate, specific and relevant search engine results. Unfortunately, Schema.org does not support anything specific to hotels or other travel suppliers, so their ability to make the offerings explicit is very limited. Schema.org was nevertheless great news because using even the existing mark-up worked to elevate search engine optimization and yield a positive ROI (case study here). Last month, Google announced its semantically driven “knowledge graph” to provide …

Thematix has released a draft of extensions to Schema.org that would enable hoteliers to better describe their offerings to search engines.  The extensions are designed to allow descriptions of such things as amenities, services, rooms and room rates — none of which is possible today using the existing taxonomy at Schema.org. This is important insofar as Thematix has already demonstrated that even the existing markup capabilities can significantly enhance search engine presence for hotels.  The extensions — if widely adopted and honored by search engines — would further enhance the utility of search engines by allowing searchers to, for example, …

Thematix was pleased to help facilitate a discussion among progressive travel providers at their recent annual OpenTravel Advisory Forum in Miami, Florida. Deborah McGuinness, a Thematix affiliate, gave the keynote for the conference, entitled the Semantic Concierge, a vision for a near term travel future in which the traveler’s efforts to plan and coordinate their travel is augmented by smart technologies that understand context and intent.  As OpenTravel itself summarized,  Another hot topic at the event was semantic technologies. Dr. Deborah McGuinness from Renassaeler Polytechnic Institute presented a great overview of her work and how she envisions the application of …