Hotels Schema.org

[BenRush]

I am looking at potentially using some Schema mark up on hotel listing pages. This is for an OTA where lots of hotels from all over the world are available for selection (think hotels.com, booking.com, agoda.com etc)

For the itemscope itemtype on say the hotel name should I be defining it as http://schema.org/hotel or http://schema.org/localbusiness

For example against the hotel name I would have:

Grand Plaza Hanoi

I assume its the former, but I was just after some 2nd opinions.

Thanks,

Ben

[KaneJamison]

Yup, take a look at the microdata generator for restaurants (none built for hotels yet that I have seen):

http://www.microdatagenerator.com/restaurant-schema

That gives you a good comparison for how the hotel format should look. Here's an example implementation for a restaurant:

Name of Restaurant

4 stars - 
     based on 321 reviews

123 Fake Street
     Seattle ,
     Washington
     98146

(206) 123-4321
   URL of Map

Categories:    American   
   Price Range: $$
   Takes Reservations: No

[BenRush]

Thanks Kane - looks like I am on the right track then. The other area I am struggling on is the mark up around reviews / star ratings.

i.e., what happens if your star ratings aren't out of 5? Google seems to make a mess of the display. I.e., I can find a hotel with a rating of 7/10 where Google will show it as 5 star in the results set.

So do I try and force the adoption of using a scale from 1-5 or is it possible to use schema mark up on a 1-10 scale?

[KaneJamison]

Boom:

<div< span="">itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating">
       <meta< span="">itemprop="worstRating" content = "1">
       <span< span="">itemprop="ratingValue">1</span<>/
       <span< span="">itemprop="bestRating">5</span<>stars</meta<></div<>

See this URL for better details: http://schema.org/Review

For the overall rating, you'll want to use http://schema.org/AggregateRating which can also be done on a larger scale.

I have only seen examples of Google using 5 star reviews in their rich snippets. I have not yet seen an example of 4 or 10 star rankings used in rich snippets. Maybe they'll adopt it down the road, maybe they'll convert to 5 stars, or maybe they'll continue ignoring it. Perhaps just consider displaying the aggregate rating as a 5 star scale, and the rest as 10?

[BenRush]

Thanks again,

This is an area where Google seem a bit pants to be honest. I have seen loads of examples where a hotel might have a rating of 7 out of 10 and Google shows 5 stars in the rich snippet data.

Not exactly a great user experience right there.

[BenRush]

Their current solution seems to be something along the lines of:

***** Rating: 8.4/10 - 900 Reviews

almost forcing two different review "views" into the same listing, which seems a little dumb from a UI perspective.