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A mobile personalized tourist guide and its user evaluation

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Abstract

The paper presents an interactive electronic guide application prototype able to recommend personalized multiple-day tourist itineraries to mobile web users. The proposed application relies on an evolutionary optimizer that allows the determination, in an acceptable time, of a near-optimal user-adapted tour for each day of the visit by considering different conflicting objectives. The tour optimizer automatically plans the itinerary by selecting the sights of potential interest based on user preferences, the available visit time considered on a daily basis, opening days and hours, visiting times, accessibility of the places of interest and weather forecasting. The interactive functionalities and facilities provided by the application are illustrated along with the model used to adapt the tourist itinerary to user preferences and constraints. An experimental qualitative and quantitative evaluation has been performed to assess the validity of the guide prototype. Particular attention has been devoted to the usability of the application and its graphic unit interface along with user satisfaction.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by the project “Organization of Cultural Heritage for Smart Tourism and Real-Time Accessibility (ORCHESTRA)” (PON04a2_D) approved and financed within the 2012 “Smart Cities and Communities” call of the Italian Ministry for University and Research.

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  1. Institute of High Performance Computing and Networking, National Research Council of Italy, Naples, Italy

    Ernesto Tarantino, Ivanoe De Falco & Umberto Scafuri

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  1. Ernesto Tarantino
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Correspondence to Ernesto Tarantino.

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Tarantino, E., De Falco, I. & Scafuri, U. A mobile personalized tourist guide and its user evaluation. Inf Technol Tourism 21, 413–455 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-019-00150-5

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