A Dynamic e-Tourism Application Using Semantic Web Services

Abstract

Semantic Web Services (SWS), the emerging convergence of Web Services with Semantic Web, is the next major generation of the Web (and of the Internet), in which e-services and business communication become more knowledge-based and agent-based. This paper discusses how SWS technologies have a particularly high chance to revolutionize one particular industry ”travel, i.e., its on-line aspect” which is called ”Dynamic Packaging” (DP). DP means dynamically (i.e., in real-time) putting together – and pricing – a package of several major travel components, e.g., air flight legs, hotel nights, car rental days, etc., from heterogeneous suppliers and heterogeneous information sources or back-end reservation services, even as those provide frequently changing availability or prices. To this end, this paper focus on approaches to semantic discovery and composition planning of semantic Web services, and briefly comment on their interrelationships. We propose an architecture that enables the integration of tourism data sources and creation of dynamic packages using Semantic Web services.

Keywords: Dynamic Packaging, Semantic Web services, Web Services, information sources, semantic discovery, semantic composition planning