Re: Proposal for new Schema.org mark-up: Vacation Rentals

Hi Yannis:

GoodRelations is a generic e-commerce schema for any industry where you have

1. someone (a person or organisation) who 
2. offers some rights (ownership, temporary usage, licensing, disposal, ...) on
3. some object or service (a car, a house, a hotel room, 500 g of cheese, a camcorder).

I strongly suggest to make the generic elements from GoodRelations that are already included in schema.org the basis for any industry-specific e-commerce extension, since you want clients to rely on the same conceptual patterns for prices, no matter of the type of object. otherwise, clients will have to apply complicated processing rules, e.g. if the modeling of prices for cars uses other conceptual elements than the pricing of hotel rooms etc.

Also, computing bundles (hotel + car, airfare + hotel) gets overly complicated.

> Do you think that GoodRelations is more suitable for this industry than a dedicated schema mark-up for vacation rentals?
Definitely. Note that while we call schema.org a schema, it is in essence a conceptual model that provides the basic distinctions for representing information.

While it is tempting to look at schema.org as a *mark-up syntax*, the respective mark-up patterns in microdata and RDFa are only derived from the underlying conceptual model.

For the types of property, I suggest to use a basic schema.org type and refine them using http://www.productontology.org types + additionalType, because otherwise schema.org will have to maintain hundreds of property types across cultural spheres (from tipi to cottage, house boats, ....).

So basically, schema.org with its GoodRelations addition is 99 % ready to go for rental: 

An apartment for $ 99 per night with a minimum stay of two nights:


<div>
  <div itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer" itemscope>
<!-- Textual description -->
    <div itemprop="name">Apartment with a sea-side view for $ 99 per night</div>
    <div itemprop="description">...more text...</div>
<!-- You rent the object -->
 <link itemprop="businessFunction" href="http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#LeaseOut" />
<!-- Structured price information: $ 99 / night for a minimum of two nights -->
   Rate: <div itemprop="priceSpecification" itemscope 
       itemtype="http://schema.org/UnitPriceSpecification">$
     <span itemprop="price">99</span>
     <meta itemprop="priceCurrency" content="USD"> per
     <meta itemprop="unitCode" content="DAY"> night
     <div itemprop="eligibleQuantity" itemtype="http://schema.org/QuantitativeValue" itemscope> (minimum
         <meta itemprop="minValue">2</div>
          <meta itemprop="hasUnitOfMeasurement" content="DAY" /> nights)
     </div>
 </div>
<!-- Validity of the offer (i.e. latest absolute booking date for that offer) -->
    <time itemprop="validThrough" datetime="2013-12-31T23:59:59Z">Offer valid until Dec. 31, 2013</time>
 <!-- Object to which the offer refers -->
   <div itemprop="itemOffered" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
  <link itemprop="additionalType" href="http://www.productontology.org/id/Apartment" itemscope />
  <div itemprop="name">Great Leisure Apartment with a sea-side to remember</div>
     <div itemprop="description">...more text...</div>
<!-- accomodation features may be added here once my ProductFeature proposal is approved ;-) -->
 </div>
</div>

This is a quick sketch, of course, so please forgive minor bugs in the example.

Martin

On Jan 8, 2013, at 11:45 AM, Καραγιαννίδης Γιάννης wrote:

> Hi Martin,
> 
> We could make use of GoodRelations but I think that it's quite generic and not quite relevant with the vacation rental industry. My incentives to create a separate schema mark-up are mainly the property types (cottage, villa, farmhouse etc) and the amenities that differ many times from hotels.
> 
> Do you think that GoodRelations is more suitable for this industry than a dedicated schema mark-up for vacation rentals?
> 
> Thank you!
> Yannis
> 
> 
> 2013/1/7 Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org>
> Hi,
> Thanks for your proposal. I would suggest to incorporate the existing GoodRelations extensions for accommodations from
> 
>     http://purl.org/acco/ns
> 
> into schema.org, since it should provide a generic pattern for all kinds of accommodations and accommodation features.
> 
> I can work on that if there is consensus about this.
> 
> Martin
> 
> On Jan 7, 2013, at 6:53 PM, Καραγιαννίδης Γιάννης wrote:
> 
> > Hi All,
> >
> >
> > I’m starting this discussion with regards to the creation of a new Schema.org mark-up concerning the Vacation Rental industry.
> >
> > The description of the proposal can be found here: http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/VacationRentals
> >
> >
> >
> > Additionally, the proposal has been added to the proposal page: http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/SchemaDotOrgProposals
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm looking forward to receive some feedback from you before proceeding to the next level of the proposal - some examples with HTML5 code
> >
> >
> >
> > Thank you for your time!
> >
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Giannis Karagiannidis
> >
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-business & web science research group
> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
> 
> e-mail:  hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org
> phone:   +49-(0)89-6004-4217
> fax:     +49-(0)89-6004-4620
> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>          http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
> skype:   mfhepp
> twitter: mfhepp
> 
> Check out GoodRelations for E-Commerce on the Web of Linked Data!
> =================================================================
> * Project Main Page: http://purl.org/goodrelations/
> 
> 
> 
> 

--------------------------------------------------------
martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen

e-mail:  hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org
phone:   +49-(0)89-6004-4217
fax:     +49-(0)89-6004-4620
www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
         http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
skype:   mfhepp 
twitter: mfhepp

Check out GoodRelations for E-Commerce on the Web of Linked Data!
=================================================================
* Project Main Page: http://purl.org/goodrelations/

Received on Tuesday, 8 January 2013 11:36:25 UTC