Nick Vivion of Tnooz reports, “The company formerly known as Swiftrank comes back with a new name and entirely new concept. The company changed its name to TravelShark in 2011, and followed a $5 million investment back in 2011 with a period of relative quiet. The company now no longer focuses on connecting hotels to travelers – it is on an ambitious mission to redefine reviews. Moving away from the arbitrary nature of the 5-star system, TravelShark distills a place into its most commonly referenced qualities. Called its ‘Essence,’ this is a wordgraph that highlights words most often used to describe a particular place. The genius here is that words are much more qualitative than stars. They deliver a much more comprehensive and descriptive view of a particular place. The star rating system has its limitations, as it is not an objective measurement of a place.” Read more

Sean O’Neill of Tnooz reports, “ZapTravel‘s elevator pitch is that it’s ‘a smart Kayak for tailored deals when you don’t know where or when you want to go.’ Type in a query in natural language, like ‘go hiking in Italy in May,’ and the site will provide information on relevant flights, hotels and activities. While Google sometimes is able to resolve ‘SFO to LAX for April 4‘, ZapTravel claims to let users ask broad queries. Examples: ‘I’d like to get away from London for a long-weekend to a place with notable cuisine’ or ‘I want to visit a notable LGBT event in Europe in May.’ Or ‘We want to take a honeymoon to a beach destination staying in a 5 star hotel for under 1,000 euros’.” Read more

Nick Vivion of Tnooz reports, “The latest foray into voice-tech comes from CheapAir.com. The voice activation feature is integrated with the company’s latest iPhone and iPad release, allowing customers to use voice to search for flights amidst the 25 million aggregated fares. The app works very simply: state your departure and destination points, date and time preferences, and the app will process the verbal input to deliver query results.” CheapAir CEO Jeff Klee stated, “We know that more and more travelers want to research flight options with their phones… We’re doing everything we can to make it easier to find the lowest fares and the best flight options. CheapAir was the first travel site to let people search for fares using natural language, we were the first to show which in-flight amenities are on every flight, and now we’ve launched the first voice-activated iPhone app.” Read more

Phillip Butler of Argophilia.com recently shared his opinions regarding semantic search as it relates to the travel industry, particularly with regard to Desti, a new travel search startup. Butler writes, “The other day Tnooz reported on Expedia testing their own variant of natural language search, now available in a Powerset-like sandbox called YourVisit. In that article Kevin May aptly points to other supposed ‘natural language search’ developments in travel, namely Evature and Hopper. The problem with this is, these systems are not AI nor true semantic search, in fact ‘natural language search’ is a buzz term actually used by Powerset to differentiate from hakia and Google semantic search experiments.” Read more

Dara Karr of Cnet.com reports that the Wikimedia Foundation is set to launch a new ad-free travel website, Wikivoyage. Karr writes, “Want to know more about the German spa city called Baden Baden, or ‘Bathing Bathing?’ Or how to get to Khajuraho — an Indian town known for its ancient erotic rock carvings? All this and more will be in the Wikimedia Foundation’s new travel site, called Wikivoyage. A bare-bones version of the site has already been up and running since September, but the official launch of the filled-out site is tentatively scheduled for January 15, according to Skift.” Read more

Kevin May of Tnooz reports, “It’s not just startups trying to capture the mood for developing natural language and semantic search in travel – Expedia is quietly working on its own platform. The project is being run out of a new research and development department within Expedia Affiliate Network and is currently aimed at providing partner sites with the early stages of natural language search using the mounds of data collected elsewhere around the Expedia portfolio. A sandbox site, YourVisit, is also up and running for testing (EAN admits it is a bit rough around the edges, but is in place purely for demonstration and beta purposes).” Read more

Ryan Kim of GigaOM recently reported that SRI International is putting out their own Siri-like personal travel assistant, Desti. He writes, “Apple’s Siri works pretty well as a personal assistant but it’s not equipped to be your virtual travel guide. But Desti which, like Siri, is a spin out from SRI International, is launching today in public beta and is looking to take on that job for consumers. Desti, which is debuting as an iPad app, offers users the ability to pose travel questions and get back specific recommendations on hotels, restaurants and events. The service, which is limited to Northern California for now, was built using SRI’s artificial intelligence technology, combined with natural language processing, semantic search and a travel-specific knowledge base. The system uses contextual clues and what it knows about a user to return relevant results, which are displayed on a very visual results page.” Read more

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.” Read more

iXiGO, a travel meta search engine has launched a new flight search tool for Facebook and Twitter that utilizes natural language processing. According to an article by Anupam Saxena, “Users can directly post a query on iXiGO’s Facebook page or make a twitter mention to @iXiGOsearch with the query. iXiGO says that it will reply to the user with a comment on his query with details of the cheapest flight found across multiple travel sites, a link to the relevant iXiGO.com result page where the user can filter the results by time, stops, price and other factors, as well as a direct booking link for booking the cheapest flight on the travel site where it is available.” Read more

Will some semantic web mysteries soon be solved? There’s been some chatter in the last few weeks about how some semantic technologies acquired by some giants in the IT space will at last see the light of day in their respective platforms. At the same time, the publicity engine has been hard at work for an upcoming tablet that also promises some semantic goodness.

Let’s start with Google, which in the spring closed on its acquisition of ITA Software, a move that was expected to help it get semantics into travel booking thanks to ITA’s Matrix airfare search engine (see our story here). Earlier this month the rumors started circulating with TechCrunch that Google would launch an ITA integrated-flight search product within a few weeks that could include features such as map-based search and information on flights, times and prices based on general search terms, such as ski trip, and user IP addresses that could bring up options from Colorado or Utah, for instance. It’s a few weeks later, and we’re still waiting.

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