Carsten Kraus, CEO of FACT-Finder reports, “Technology continues to push the travel, tourism and hospitality industry forward and make it more dynamic than ever before. But the next phase is where it gets REALLY exciting… In the UK alone, 78% of people still search via their desktop, but a growing number now also search via their mobile and tablet devices (13% and 9% respectively). But we are beginning to see some frustration among those who search for their holidays online, because search engine technology cannot match up to the imagination and sophistication of the human mind.”

He goes on, “Any travel agent will tell you that the type of questions they get asked are ‘I want a Christmas holiday on a beach with our little daughter’, not a series of checklists. Most of these terms will not be in any hotel description, so you have to understand what is going on to be able to find the right answers – keyword searching will not do this. Also by using the word ‘beach’, the inference is that the person wants to go somewhere where it is warm. On top of this ‘our daughter’ will likely mean there are two adults. ‘Little’ might also infer the need for childcare onsite. Until now, this hasn’t been possible in a search function as search has not been semantic – i.e. it has been unable to take inferences from the way in which we, as humans think (and therefore type into a search box or engine) and produce intelligent answers from that.”

Read more here.

Image: Courtesy Flickr/ Moyan_Brenn_BE_BACK_on_Oct_10th