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Article
Publication date: 12 March 2018

Thara Angskun and Jitimon Angskun

This paper aims to find a way to personalize attraction recommendations for travelers. The research objective is to find a more accurate way to suggest new attractions to each…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to find a way to personalize attraction recommendations for travelers. The research objective is to find a more accurate way to suggest new attractions to each traveler based on the opinions of other like-minded travelers and the traveler’s preferences.

Design/methodology/approach

To achieve the goal, developers have created a personalized system to generate attraction recommendations. The system considers an individual traveler’s preferences to construct a qualitative attraction ranking model. The new ranking model is the result of blending two processes: K-means clustering and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP).

Findings

The performance of the developed recommendation system has been assessed by measuring the accuracy and scalability of the ranking model of the system. The experimental results indicate that the ranking model always returns accurate results independent of the number of attractions and the number of travelers in each cluster. The ranking model has also proved to be scalable because the processing time is independent of the numbers of travelers. Additionally, the results reveal that the overall system usability is at a very satisfactory level.

Research limitations/implications

The main theoretical implication is that integrating the processes of K-means and AHP techniques enables a new qualitative ranking model for personalized recommendations that deliver only high-quality attractions. However, the designed recommendation system has some limitations. First, it is necessary to manually update information about the new tourist attractions. Second, the overall response time depends on the internet bandwidth and latency.

Practical implications

This research contributes to the tourism business and individual travelers by introducing an accurate and scalable way to suggest new attractions to each traveler. The potential benefit includes possible increased revenue for travel agencies that offer personalized package tours and support individual travelers to make the final travel decisions. The designed system could also integrate with itinerary planning systems to plot out a journey that pinpoints what travelers will most enjoy.

Originality/value

This research proposes a design and implementation of a personalized recommendation system based on the qualitative attraction ranking model introduced in this article. The novel ranking model is designed and developed by integrating K-means and AHP techniques, which has proved to be accurate and scalable.

研究目的

本研究主要探索如何建立个性化旅游胜地推荐模型。本研究通过分析旅游兴趣相似的游客意见和游客偏好选择, 建立一种更加准确推荐游客需要的旅游胜地方法。

研究设计/方法/途径

为了达到研究目的, 本研究建立了一种个性化推荐旅游胜地的信息系统。其系统通过分析每个游客的旅游偏好来建设一种定性旅游胜地排名模型。这种新型模型主要通过结合以下两种分析算法:(1)K平均聚类算法(K-means clustering)(2)层次分析法(AHP)。

研究结果

本研究建立的推荐信息系统经过了准确率和拓展性的测评。实验结果表明这种排名模型的准确率并不受旅游胜地多少和游客样本大小的影响。此外, 这种排名模型也具有拓展性, 因为算法时间并不受游客样本大小的影响。最后, 研究实验表明此排名模型客户体验性达到合格满意要求。

研究理论限制/意义

本研究的主要理论意义在于其结合了K平均聚类算法和层次分析法, 并建立了一种新型定性排名模型, 这种排名模型个性化地推荐更高质量的旅游胜地给游客。然而, 这种推荐信息系统有一些局限性。第一, 新旅游胜地的信息需要手动输入。第二, 整个系统的处理时间决定于网络带宽和延迟状况。

研究实践意义

本研究的实践意义在于其建立了一种准确和具有拓展性的新型旅游胜地推荐模型。这种模型的潜在价值将有利于旅游机构提供定制化旅游套餐和帮助游客制定旅游计划。此外, 这种模型还可以结合旅游路线计划系统以制定更加使游客满意的旅游行程。

研究原创性/价值

本研究推荐了一种基于定性旅游胜地排名模型的个性化旅游推荐模型。这种新型的排名模型结合K平均聚类算法和层次分析法, 实验证明这种模型更具准确性和拓展性。

Details

Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, vol. 9 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-9880

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 October 2019

Thara Angskun and Jitimon Angskun

This paper aims to introduce a hierarchical fuzzy system for an online review analysis named FLORA. FLORA enables tourists to decide their destination without reading numerous…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to introduce a hierarchical fuzzy system for an online review analysis named FLORA. FLORA enables tourists to decide their destination without reading numerous reviews from experienced tourists. It summarizes reviews and visualizes them through a hierarchical structure. The visualization does not only present overall quality of an accommodation, but it also presents the condition of the bed, hospitality of the front desk receptionist and much more in a snap.

Design/methodology/approach

FLORA is a complete system which acquires online reviews, analyzes sentiments, computes feature scores and summarizes results in a hierarchical view. FLORA is designed to use an overall score, rated by real tourists as a baseline for accuracy comparison. The accuracy of FLORA has achieved by a novel sentiment analysis process (as part of a knowledge acquisition engine) based on semantic analysis and a novel rating technique, called hierarchical fuzzy calculation, in the knowledge inference engine.

Findings

The performance comparison of FLORA against related work has been assessed in two aspects. The first aspect focuses on review analysis with binary format representation. The results reveal that the hierarchical fuzzy method, with probability weighting of FLORA, is achieved with the highest values in precision, recall and F-measure. The second aspect looks at review analysis with a five-point rating scale rating by comparing with one of the most advanced research methods, called fuzzy domain ontology. The results reveal that the hierarchical fuzzy method, with probability weighting of FLORA, returns the closest results to the tourist-defined rating.

Research limitations/implications

This research advances knowledge of online review analysis by contributing a novel sentiment analysis process and a novel rating technique. The FLORA system has two limitations. First, the reviews are based on individual expression, which is an arbitrary distinction and not always grammatically correct. Consequently, some opinions may not be extracted because the context free grammar rules are insufficient. Second, natural languages evolve and diversify all the time. Many emerging words or phrases, including idioms, proverbs and slang, are often used in online reviews. Thus, those words or phrases need to be manually updated in the knowledge base.

Practical implications

This research contributes to the tourism business and assists travelers by introducing comprehensive and easy to understand information about each accommodation to travelers. Although the FLORA system was originally designed and tested with accommodation reviews, it can also be used with reviews of any products or services by updating data in the knowledge base. Thus, businesses, which have online reviews for their products or services, can benefit from the FLORA system.

Originality/value

This research proposes a FLORA system which analyzes sentiments from online reviews, computes feature scores and summarizes results in a hierarchical view. Moreover, this work is able to use the overall score, rated by real tourists, as a baseline for accuracy comparison. The main theoretical implication is a novel sentiment analysis process based on semantic analysis and a novel rating technique called hierarchical fuzzy calculation.

Details

Journal of Systems and Information Technology, vol. 21 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1328-7265

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 February 2016

Jitimon Angskun, Sasiwimon Korbua and Thara Angskun

This paper aims to focus on time-related factors influencing on an itinerary planning system. The research objective is to produce an itinerary planning system which balances…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to focus on time-related factors influencing on an itinerary planning system. The research objective is to produce an itinerary planning system which balances between the limited time of traveler and the number of tourist attractions they can visit. This system should facilitate travelers by presenting candidate itineraries that visit attractions as much as possible under several time-related factors.

Design/methodology/approach

To achieve the goal, an itinerary planning system has been designed and developed. The system considers several time-related factors including acceptable total travel time specified by travelers, time-related factors at an attraction (e.g. time zones, opening hours and visiting time) and time-related factors of traveling (e.g. road obstructions, weather, date and time and rest time). A routing algorithm which is aware of these time-related factors has been introduced to find candidate itineraries.

Findings

The performance of developed itinerary planning system has been evaluated by measuring speed and accuracy of seven traveling situations under different time-related factors. The experimental results indicate that the proposed routing algorithm spends less planning time than the traditional exhaustive routing algorithm. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm over the exhaustive algorithm is approximately 46 per cent while the accuracy is equal. Additionally, this designed system is evaluated by usability testing from nine experts. The evaluation is performed by measuring the user satisfaction level with the ability of user–system interaction. The results show that the overall system usability is in very satisfied level.

Research limitations/implications

The designed itinerary planning system has three limitations. First, Google maps technology could not find information of some tourist attractions because these places were marked with several coordinates on the map. Second, holiday periods are manually kept into the database of system; therefore, it is necessary to annually and manually update the information. Third, the developed system is an online planner; thus, the speed of system depends on the bandwidth of users.

Practical implications

The designed itinerary planning system considers time-related factors as much as possible and more than the existing planning systems. This implies that the designed system is one of the most accurate planning systems in practice. Thus, the tourism business could rely on the developed itinerary planning system to help travel agents plan a travel itinerary properly and receive an accurate and up-to-date travel explanation to their customers.

Originality/value

This research proposes the novel design and implementation of an itinerary planning system which can suggest candidate itineraries, which visit maximum attractions under several time-related factors.

Details

Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, vol. 7 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-9880

Keywords

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