Mobile tourist guides: bridging the gap between automation and users retaining control of their itineraries

Abstract

We present a mobile tourist guide for planning and conducting sightseeing day trips. Users are provided different means to access and select the available sights, events and other points of interest (POIs): Via a hybrid recommender system, via browsing by sight category, via searching over descriptions of POIs or via browsing on a map. Based on user's selection a route planner for time-constrained activities generates route suggestions taking additional constraints for public transport connections into account. A novelty of the implemented approach compared to existing solutions for tourists is that the user retains full control over the tour by diverse interaction possibilities: Before route generation different means for selecting POIs are provided, during route generation multiple route variants are suggested and after route generation users are able to directly edit any detail at any time, even if there are existing constraints that hinder the direct execution of an edit operation. Moreover, recommender, planner and editing are closely interconnected: Recommendations are used by the planner to fill-up unavoidable gaps. This may also be initiated manually during editing where also parts of the planner are involved to permit only those edits that keep the route feasible. The app is currently tailored to the city of Nuremberg but can be extended for other cities as well.