semtech a travel strategy for semantic technology 060611

A Tr a v e l S t r a t e g y f o r

S e m a n t i c Te c h n o l o g y

Buddy Altus – Avis Budget Group

Robert Kost –THEMATIX

Agenda

Avis Budget Group and the road to Semantics

Avis Car Rental Ontology

Use Cases

Close

Av i s B u d g e t G r o u p a n d

t h e r o a d t o S e m a n t i c s

The Road to Semantics

Customers tell us how they

want to engage

“Where can I rent a Camaro?

“Can I rent a car with an MP3

jack?”

“What do you have that fits a

big man on a tight budget?”

“Can I add a friend to the

reservation?”

“You‟re sold out; now what?”

T h e R o a d t o S e m a n t i c s

Car Rental Industry Challenges

Purely transactional interactions

Competitive differentiation

Lack of granular marketing

“tail on the dog”


Overcoming the Challenge

Better Industry Partner Integration

Better Product / Service Differentiation

Better Merchandising & Distribution

Finding rather than searching


Why Semantic Technology?

Flexibility

Power

Association

Marketing and Merchandising

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/3448804778/





Why a Car Rental Ontology?

Top-line revenue

marketing driven requirements

Industry leadership and standardization

OpenTravel Alliance responsible for SOA standards;

ontology “a natural”

Expansion to air, hotel, rail and other suppliers possible and

desirable, driven by interoperability concerns

Occurring in context of the growing importance of

data strategy

The Road to Semantics

What We Did

Create an ontology for specific use cases

Establish a „proprietary standard”

Begin to execute the use cases

But a proprietary-standard does not scale

Help build an industry standard

Travel is a deeply interrelated industry value chain

Travel distribution is a highly automated and realtime

system: arguably, the largest eCommerce category on the

internet

The Industry need standards for interoperability

The Open Travel Alliance: XML web services standards

Others: ATPCO, IATA, Open Axis…


Ontology project, driven by interest in

better governance,

better search optimization and leverage,

better marketing, merchandising,

CRM and analytics

Improved intra-domain and cross-domain search

functionality

Use OTA to drive adoption of car rental ontology, and

thereafter other travel ontologies

T h e Av i s O n t o l o g y

O n t o l o g y C o m p o n e n t s

The ontology intends to model the Avis line of business, and from the perspective of sales and marketing, but not from the perspective of

operations. Thus, functions that are not of interest to the consumer, sales staff or marketing staff are not included in the model.

CarRentalAgent

FacilityCarRentalFacilit

y

Vehicles

offering

ISO 1087 AvisCarRent

al

P r e l i m i n a r y O n t o l o g y

A r c h i t e c t u r e

Basic Terminology & Ontology Metadata

Language CountriesGeospatial &

AddressingTime & UoM

Agents/People FacilitiesContracts &

OffersBasic CRM

General Renter

Profile

Rental Car

Facilities

Rental Contracts

& OffersRental Eligibility

Vehicle

Description

ACRISS / OTA

Vehicle Codes

Avis Wizard

ProfileAvis Facilities

Avis Contracts &

Offers

Avis Eligibility

Requirements

Avis Vehicle

Description

Avis Vehicle

Classification

Metadata

Standard UtilityConcepts

Business Capability Concepts

Common Domain Terminology

Avis Specific Terminology

W h a t i s t h e O n t o l o g y U l t i m a t e l y

G o o d F o r ?

Responding to customers the way a person might

Natural language with semantic interpretation

Making differential offers

Determining or suggesting customer rates, cars

Inferring and responding to customer intent

“are you in town for …?” “may we suggest …”

Providing powerful business analytics

Heterogeneous facts in unique, ad hoc combination

S e m a n t i c U s e C a s e s

Synthetic Merchandising

Search Engine Enhancement

Smart Search

Ancillary / Cross-sell

S e m a n t i c M e r c h a n d i s i n g

“Comfort-

Oriented”

Flight

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

…

S e a r c h E n h a n c e m e n t

Search engines as a “front

door”

dramatically increase relevance by

inclusion of more

meaningful, synonymic tags

Enrich search results, adding

ratings, video, prices, avails,

amenities, locality etc.

S m a r t S e a r c h

Search of Avis produces user intent, leading directly to a booking.

For Example: Search term “performance cars” maps to ontology class PerformanceCars.

PerformanceCars is defined by factors including gross horsepower and power to weight ratio

PerformanceCars class contains many car classes: CamaroSS, CadillacCTS, FordMustang, BMW328i

Return list of PerformanceCars car classes available at Avis

If search terms do not map to ontology, default to existing text search

S m a r t S e a r c h

S a m e “ O u t s i d e a n d I n s i d e ” o f

A v i s . c o m

A n c i l l a r y a n d C r o s s - P a r t n e r

S a l e

“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

M o r e u s e c a s e s …

Location and Event related services

Data mash-ups providing valuable customer

packages or advisories

Social media applications that “wrap”

conventional bookings in different workflows

Itinerary advisors, accommodating

changes, warning of events, providing

alternatives

Smart Itineraries (TripIt?)

…

Vision

Travel agents to return!

Standardized, shared meaning facilitates common

operations to be performed across many suppliers

Fulfilling on the SOA vision

The Customer Experience is both real and virtual

Use semantics to provide services not heretofore

possible

Provide tools for finding, rather than searching

The customer is a search term

Reach through all available media

Distributed customer entry points for bookings

T h a n k y o u