Mobile Tourist Guide: Bridging the Gap between Recommending, Planning and User-Centered Interaction

Abstract

We present a mobile tourist guide for planning and conducting sightseeing day trips. The system combines a hybrid recommender system for sights, events and other points of interest with a tour planner for time-constrained activities 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 being 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 and planner are closely interconnected by regarding the reachability of recommended items with respect to the current selection as well as filling unavoidable gaps with fitting recommendations. The application is tailored to the city of Nuremberg, Germany, but can be extended by additional data for other destinations as well.