Context-Aware Information Services to Support Tourist Communities

Several context-aware applications exist that provide tourists with location-based content delivery and interface adaptation to current activity. Our approach differs from previous ones as we consider a tourist not only as a target for content delivery, but also as a source of valuable information, useful for other tourists and service providers as well. This work describes a tourism context-aware application that provides tourists on the move with proper mobile and location-based context-aware services supporting community building and knowledge exchange. To this purpose, the application includes a context-aware instant messaging service and a tourist service provider reputation system, which supports tourists during decision-making processes. Here we describe main issues related to the design and prototype implementation of the tourism context-aware application and main results of user trials.