Electronic Tourism

The system generates personalised plans for tourist visits to the chosen area, taking into account the time available to the tourists, their resources and personal tastes. Thanks to Smart Process Management technology in Artificial Intelligence, the system can give the tourist the same service as an expert tourist guide for the area to be visited.

Technological Challenge:

When deciding to visit an area and planning the trip, the tourist or the persona planning the visit has the problem of having a great deal of information and no way to organise it, as it is not centralised in a single system or platform.

Also, when making decisions in the design of the tourism plan, it is necessary to adapt it to the tastes, preferences and restrictions of each of the tourists on the trip. The tourist planning a trip also has to take into account multiple variables, such as:

• Availability of accommodation.
• Opening times of museums, theme parks, etc.
• Time available for the journey and scheduled dates.
• Coordination and availability of transport.
• Restrictions of the tourists, for example, a physical disability.

Aware of the importance of offering services which improve the quality of tourism, in 2010 Granada City Council adopted the TuristIA solution, becoming the first public body in Spain to use Artificial Intelligence technology in tourism planning for visits to Granada, enabling visitors to create personalised plans.

The current model of tourist information is managed by online and bricks-and-mortar travel agencies. In these cases the tourist fills in a form, online or at the travel agency, indicating, for example:

• Start and end dates.
• Gastronomy.
• Reason for travel.

However, the data in the form or provided to the travel agent are not enough to understand the tourist’s needs, tastes and restrictions and adapt the planned visit to them. This means that planning a visit which meets tourists’ expectations is a complex task, as a large amount of data must be combined to adapt the visit to the needs of each tourist, and this information is not always easy to find.

Solution:

TuristIA is an Intelligent System for planning and personalising tourist visits, integrating the IActive Intelligent Decisor, an intelligent component based on Smart Process Management technology, designed to help in the decision making process, capable of generating a personalised tourist visit plan.

TuristIA generates personalised itineraries automatically in the same way as a tourism expert, thanks to the use of Artificial Intelligence and Smart Process Management technology.

Tourists can have a personalised travel plan automatically in just a few seconds, which deals with the tourist or group of tourists as an expert tourist guide would. This enables the management of large amounts of resources of different kinds: hotels of various categories, restaurants, transport, monuments, opening times, etc. so that the plan produced takes into account specific situations, such as:

• Tourists with children under two require a cot in the room.
• Tourists with a physical disability will be sent only to disabled accessible sites.
• Tourists should not be directed to beaches more than 60 kilometres from their base.
• Tourists choosing a cheaper trip will stay in 1 to 3 star hotels. However, if they decide to travel without price restrictions they will stay in 4 or 5 star hotels.

Tourists using the system enter various characteristics, such as  travel preferences such as for beaches, mountains or historic sites, and using the knowledge base and interactive reasoning process of IActive Intelligent Decisor, TuristIA generates a tourism plan which can be accepted by the tourist if meeting their requirements. If unsuitable, another plan can be requested or the requirements adjusted, so that the final plan meets the expectations of the tourist.

A tourism plan is a sequence of activities in chronological order, including the time and place of departure, transport, booking accommodation, opening times of monuments, and so on.

TuristIA was developed using the product IActive Knowledge Studio, which enabled the modelling of the expert knowledge tourism guides in the city of Granada; in other words, their expert knowledge is reproduced in the Intelligent System.

The development tool IActive Knowledge Studio was used to integrate the smart component IActive Intelligent Decisor, which enables the system to help in the decision-making process of tourists when planning their trips.

Advantages:

• Personalised tourism plan. The system gathers the needs, tastes, preferences and restrictions of the tourist, such as disabilities, creating an itinerary where all resources are disabled accessible.

• Managing the available time. Organises the different visits taking into account the places, monuments, areas, transport, etc.

• Availability of resources in place to be visited. Takes into account all the available resources in the tourism plan, for example, excluding hotels where no accommodation is available.

• Managing groups. Ensured the co-ordination of tourist groups for different activities at the same time and for joint activities, such as bringing the groups together at mealtimes.

• Access 24x7. The system is available whenever tourists decide to request a plan.