Re: Distance

Disclosure: I am affiliated with Rob Kost. We are currently doing markup for
some hotel sites.

 

A recurring structure on "resort" hotel sites is a table showing the
distance from the hotel to local attractions. For example, hotels in Orlando
often show distance to Disneyland, Wet 'n Wild, and so forth. Below is an
example of how such markup might be constructed:

 

<span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Hotel>

  <span itemprop="name">a resort hotel</span>

  .

  <table>

    .

    <tr itemprop="distanceTo" itemscope
itemtype="http://schema.org/StructuredValue/PathDistance">

      <td itemprop="toDistance" itemscope
itemtype="http://schema.org/Distance">7 Mi</td>

      <td itemprop="toPlace" itemscope
itemtype="http://schema.org/TouristAttraction>

        <span itemprop="name">Disneyland</span>

      </td>

   </tr>

    .

  </table>

</span>

 

What we find awkward is the need to define a class (PathDistance) that
corresponds to a row in this particular table.

 

There are other tables that contain useful data: room rates, attraction
ticket prices as sold by the hotel for various classes of entry to the
attraction. Are we supposed to create classes for each such table we
encounter? Is there a better way to deal with this kind of HTML construct?

 

We also had to invent some new properties:

 

"distanceTo" is a new property of Place with a target type of PathDistance

"toPlace" is a property of PathDistance with Place as a target type

"toDistance" is a property of PathDistance with Distance as a target type

 

There really is not an existing schema.org property that could be extended
to define "distanceTo". The public documentation (including this forum) does
not seem to address the definition of new properties that extend schema.org.
Is it conceivable that there will be an extension mechanism based on OWL's
notion of top object property and subproperties? Or should we think to
create a vocabulary that defines these things and incorporates the reusable
parts of schema.org?

 

Thanks,

 

Jim Rhyne

Thematix Partners