The aim of the research project SEMAMO (Semantic Market Monitoring) is to make use of the increasingly growing information available at web-based sales and marketing channels for market research. This is accomplished by using semi automatic analyses in combination with semantic domain models, where the latter guide the statistical proc­essing flow and the statistical results feed back to the domain model.  SEMAMO is based on the assumption that the Web may serve as a “picture” of the reality and that the respective online channels map - in an accurate and timely manner - market developments in terms of product descriptions, distribution, promotions, and price developments. In this paper we describe the background as well as the general approach and report on our first results.

Key words: tourism markets, information extraction, market monitoring, semantic systems