Tourism application with CNN-Based Classification specialized for cultural information

Abstract

Over-tourism has become an important difficulty in Japan because the number of visiting international tourists has increased in recent years. This intensive tourism leads to sightseeing problems because opportunities to inform tourists about culture and rules in tourist areas are few. Some system is needed to convey correct cultural aspects of tourist areas. This paper proposes a system to present a user with useful information such as area- specific culture from photographs taken with a convolutional neural network (CNN). Tourists can gain information by associating the contents with the real world by browsing useful information while viewing photographs. After we constructed the prototype system to present 30 types of useful information in English, we evaluated our system quantitatively. We also administered a questionnaire survey for Japanese and foreign residents. The results demonstrate that our system is effective to facilitate foreign tourists' understanding Japanese culture and norms.