January 5, 2011 – Managing content on a typical destination marketing organization’s website is very competitive, almost as competitive as servicing the customers.

We found this applicable news on tnooz.com in their article, “Rough guide to tourism board websites and technology.” Most organizations develop their own solutions on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately, not all the solutions work.

The website upgrade most frequently planned by these organizations includes expert intelligent systems that learn who the traveler is and configure their experiences based on individual preferences. This is starting to sound a lot like semantic technology.

An optimal system should collect user profile data matched with individual preferences for goods and services while feeding data back to its clients as spreadsheets, graphs, and reports. In addition, an optimal tool solution will facilitate and monetize web operations in an online travel industry that is characterized by a high rate of product evolution. It will not be dependent upon process or tied to outdated technology paradigms.

It will be interesting to see what the travel industry will become as semantic technology manages the content.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.