Development and evaluation of a context‐driven, mobile tourist guide

Abstract

Purpose The behavior of tourists strongly depends on the availability and quality of information. Too little information as well as too much can be disorienting and forces many tourists to join the majority visiting major sights. This causes a few crowded places in contrast to many which are under‐utilized. A Destination Management Organization has the goal to spread tourists more evenly, whereas the tourists would like to enjoy the destination to its full potential according to their personal interests. The paper aims to focus on the issues surrounding the creation of a mobile tourist guide. Design/methodology/approach A field trial was conducted in the summer of 2005 to study the following questions as a precondition for the development: Is it possible to seed generic interest profiles in the mobile context that allow the accurate prediction of actual rankings? Are the interest profiles sufficiently diverse to base personalized tours on individual interest profiles instead of interest prototypes? How do personalized tours affect the spatial behavior of tourist? Three methods to elicit the generic preferences of tourist in the mobile context are compared with actual rankings using Spearman's rank order coefficient. Findings The diversity of the interest profiles is analyzed in various ways leading to the conclusion that personalized interest profiles are necessary. For the gathered profiles tours are computed and simulated in order to gain a first insight into the effect on the spatial behavior of tourists. Originality/value The dynamic tour guide is supporting both goals by means of pervasive computing based on the actual context which is defined by personal interests, location and schedule of a tourist. It enables a personalized, spontaneous and guided tour.