Mobile Tourism Guides

This study investigates theoretical model of tourist intention in the context of mobile tourism guide. The research model consists of three constructs: mobile design quality, innovation characteristics, and intention to use mobile tourism guide. In order to investigate the effects of determinants and examine the relationships, partial least squares is employed for data analysis and research model development. The results show that mobile design quality and innovation quality significantly impact on tourists' intention to use mobile tourism guide. Furthermore, mobile design quality has a strong influence on innovation characteristics, and cannot be the moderator on the relationship between innovation characteristics and tourists' intention to use mobile tourism guide. Our findings propose theoretical model for mobile research and provide an important guideline for developing mobile application.

This study aims to predict the level of international tourists' intention to use MTG in the context of Thai national parks, and investigates the roles of mobile design qualities (content quality, appearance quality, and interaction quality) through perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use on intention. The mixed-method using exploratory sequential design is the research method. The qualitative approach is started in the first stage then quantitative approach is analysed the large sample size. This study extends the TAM2 with mobile design qualities. The results shows the high level of international tourist' intention to use MTG. It indicates that the international tourists will intent to the mobile tourism guide (MTG), if the MTG is provided for them. The direct factors of tourists' intention are perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, mobile content quality and mobile appearance quality. The most direct effect is mobile content quality. The qualities of content and appearance have the positive roles on perceived usefulness, while the qualities of appearance and interaction have the indirect effects through perceived ease-of-use on tourists' intention. The proposed model provides the body of knowledge in the context of MTG, especially the factors of international tourists' intention to use MTG.

Recommender systems are software frameworks that employ a specific type of information filtering technique, aiming at recommending information items or social elements that are likely to be of interest to the user. Herein, we present the evaluation results of the recently prototyped tourism recommender system (TRS). We followed a formal evaluation process to validate the usability of two versions of the TRS by users in realistic environments; the first is a typical web recommender system (wTRS), while the second is a system that enables ...

This study aims to predict the level of international tourists' intention to use MTG in the context of Thai national parks, and investigates the roles of mobile design qualities (content quality, appearance quality, and interaction quality) through perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use on intention. The mixed-method using exploratory sequential design is the research method. The qualitative approach is started in the first stage then quantitative approach is analysed the large sample size. This study extends the TAM2 with mobile design qualities. The results shows the high level of international tourist' intention to use MTG. It indicates that the international tourists will intent to the mobile tourism guide (MTG), if the MTG is provided for them. The direct factors of tourists' intention are perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, mobile content quality and mobile appearance quality. The most direct effect is mobile content quality. The qualities of conte...

Smart tourism is a concept that is becoming more and more popular worldwide in modern tourism. It is a tourism orientated part of the smart city concept, which can also be treated as a specific type of business model. Support and presence of tourist attractions for smartphone users through various apps is one of the first technological stages in the process of adapting this concept in a touristic region. Therefore, the paper's aim was to observe and measure the development of touristic sites' presence in mobile applications, in a developing touristic region. In order to do so, we compared data obtained from mobile applications in the years 2015 and 2019. The selected apps contain databases of touristic sites and allow tourists to search for attractions, hotels and restaurants. The comparison showed quantitative changes in the number of those types of objects found by mobile apps in the Upper Silesian metropolitan area, picturing the development and use of those apps in this given region.

Özet

Turistlerin ziyaret ettikleri bölgeleri yakından tanımak, ziyaret ettikleri destinasyona ilişkin detaylı ve doğru bilgi alabilmek için yararlandıkları turist rehberlerinin yerini, teknolojik gelişmelerle birlikte “mobil rehberler” almaya başlamıştır. Akıllı uygulamaların yaygınlaşması ile birlikte web tabanlı sunuculardaki bilgilere gps (küresel konum yer belirleme sistemi) üzerinden bağlanabilen cihazlarla, turistler bulundukları destinasyonda istedikleri yere kendi imkânları ile gidebilmektedirler. Bu çalışmada gittikçe popüler hale gelen mobil rehber ile turist rehberinin kültürel mirasın aktarımı konusunda yetkinliğinin karşılaştırılması amaçlanmıştır. Bu bağlamda araştırma alanı olarak, profesyonel turist rehberlerinin anlatım yaptığı ve mobil rehber uygulamasının da kullanıldığı Mevlana Müzesi seçilmiştir. Araştırma için, ilgili literatür taraması incelendikten sonra yarı yapılandırılmış görüşme tekniğine uygun olarak görüşme formlarında yer alan sorular oluşturulmuş ve müze ziyaretçileri ile görüşmeler gerçekleştirilmiştir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Kültürel Miras, Profesyonel Turist Rehberliği, Mobil Rehberlik

Abstract

"Mobile guides" began to replace of tourist guides that tourists take advantage in order to receive detailed and accurate information about the destination and knowing the region closely.  Tourists can go wherever they want by themselves with the devices that connect servers of web-based information on GPS (global positioning system location) with expansion of smart applications. In this study it is aimed to compare mobile guides who becoming increasingly popular and tourist guides’ competence in the transfer of cultural heritage. In this context, Mevlana Museum, which has mobile guides application and tour guide service has been choosed as research area. With examined related literature, the interview questions were created and semi-structured interviews conducted with tourists.
Keywords: Cultural Heritage, Professional Tour Guidance, Mobile Guidance

This study aims to design a smartphone app as a tour guide to the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, specifically for the Contemporary Muslim Calligraphy Exhibition. It employs a “free-choice tour” which allows visitors to freely choose the exhibits as they roam the exhibition. The collaborative heuristic evaluation (CHE) method was used to evaluate the user interface design. This study concluded that expert users found significantly more interface issues compared to the novice users. 3 experts and 3 novices were involved during evaluation. Novice users found problem that expert missed.

Tour guides at historic sites are increasingly recognized by heritage and place studies as important agents of place creation and recreation. Guides at Civil War sites repeatedly preform official and vernacular historical narratives for school groups, military staff-rides, and general visitors. At Wilson's Creek National Battlefield in Southwest Missouri, the interpretive division relies on a reciprocal relationship with dozens of volunteer educators who make it possible to keep the Ray House, a homestead site used as a field hospital during the Battle of Wilson's Creek, open for visitor tours. Using the analysis of surveys, in-depth interviews, and tour observations, this study seeks to illustrate that volunteers act as important conduits for channeling and reinforcing certain cultural heritage identities and promulgating certain national values and popular myths. In this paper I will discuss the politics of attachment and discomfort as volunteer guides create narratives that are often far removed from the objects or stories established by the museum and park management. I will focus on the way guides create the stories designed to make an impression on visitors and why those stories regularly exclude difficult histories of enslavement and violence against women.

Mobile tourist guides have attracted considerable research interest during the past decade resulting in numerous standalone and web-based mobile applications. Particular emphasis has been given to personalisation of services, typically based on travel recommender systems used to assist tourists in choosing places to visit; these systems address an important aspect of personalization and hence reduce the information burden for the user. However, existing systems fail to exploit information, behaviours, evaluations or ratings of other tourists with similar interests, which would potentially provide ground for the cooperative production of improved tourist content and travel recommendations. In this paper we extend this notion of travel recommender systems utilizing collaborative filtering techniques while also taking into account contextual information (such as the current user’s location, time, weather conditions and places already visited by the user) for deriving improved recommendations in pervasive environments. We also propose the use of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) installations around tourist sites for enabling precise localization and also providing mobile users convenient and inexpensive means for uploading tourist information and ratings about Points of Interest (POI) via their mobile devices. We also introduce the concept of ‘context-aware rating’, whereby user ratings uploaded through WSN infrastructures are weighted higher to differentiate among users that rate POIs using the mobile tourist guide application while onsite and others using the Internet away from the POI.

A tecnologia móvel ganha projeção como plataforma de distribuição de produtos e serviços turísticos. Entre as fontes de informação mais utilizadas pelos viajantes estão os guias turísticos, que se popularizam no formato de aplicativos para dispositivos móveis, visando manter o viajante informado e orientado de modo dinâmico. A pesquisa tem por objetivo analisar a estrutura dos aplicativos de viagens para dispositivos móveis, a partir de um estudo comparativo de caráter qualitativo e exploratório dos guias turísticos Lonely Planet e mTrip, respectivamente das empresas BBC Worldwide e Apple Inc. Trata-se de uma pesquisa baseada em revisão bibliográfica e na análise dos guias turísticos sobre a cidade de New York, considerando as seguintes categorias de análises: conteúdo informativo, m-Commerce, interatividade e versões multilíngues. Como resultados, verifica-se que, em geral, há similaridades entre os conteúdos apresentados pelos dois aplicativos. Todavia, nas outras categorias de an...

Recommender systems are software frameworks that employ a specific type of information filtering technique, aiming at recommending information items or social elements that are likely to be of interest to the user. Herein, we present the evaluation results of the recently prototyped Tourism Recommender System (TRS). We followed a formal evaluation process to validate the usability of two versions of the TRS by users in realistic environments; the first is a typical web recommender system (wTRS), while the second is a system that enables tourist content recommendations addressed to mobile users (mTRS). The usability evaluation tests have been undertaken at the municipality of Mytilene, Greece.

Abstract—Recently, Automated checkout shopping trolley technologies have taken an advance step than the previous introduced self-checkout system in terms of greater convenience, ease-of-use and greater efficiency. As this technology is considerable new in the market of developing countries, hence it is vital to explore the perception of consumers toward the use of automated checkout trolley. The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions and expectations of both enterprise users and end users toward the proposed ...

Abstract—Recently, Automated checkout shopping trolley technologies have taken an advance step than the previous introduced self-checkout system in terms of greater convenience, ease-of-use and greater efficiency. As this technology is considerable new in the market of developing countries, hence it is vital to explore the perception of consumers toward the use of automated checkout trolley. The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions and expectations of both enterprise users and end users toward the proposed ...

In this paper we describe the design concept, prototype development, and initial findings for a mobile guide supporting serendipitous exploration of a city. The system will allow a tourist to freely explore a new city, while providing them with peace of mind to not accidentally walk past attractions they desire to see. We have developed a proximity model and vibration patterns for alerts, and devised ways of mitigating tradeoffs between battery use and location accuracy.

This study investigates the determinants of international tourists' intention to use mobile tourism guide in the context of Thai national parks. The study focuses on innovation characteristics as the determinants of international tourists' intention to use mobile tourism guide. The innovation characteristics of mobile tourism guide consist of relative advantage, compatibility, simplicity, trialability, and mobility. A convenience sampling technique is used for data collection. The 708 data sets from international tourists are analyzed by SPSS. The factor analysis results suggests that two innovation characteristics of mobile tourism guide such as relative advantage and compatibility should be grouped into one characteristic, this characteristic is named practical advantage. The results of study also evidence that the determinants of international tourists' intention to use mobile tourism guide in the context of Thai national parks are practical advantage, trialability, and mobility. The simplicity is not a determinant of international tourists' intention to use mobile tourism guide. The empirical results of this paper extend the mobile information technology research in the context of mobile tourism guide, and provide a valuable guideline for developing and implementation mobile information technology.

The proliferation of multimedia encryption techniques allows securing various applications including tele-browsing and visio-conferencing. However, these techniques may also constitute useful tools for malicious users to transmit prohibited data without being detected by preventive and reactive security mechanisms. This paper proposes an application-layer filtering strategy for progressively enciphered JPEG2000 image data. It first consists in analyzing the JPEG2000 syntax and second employs progressive decryption and correlation to look for a match between the transmitted flow and a set of pre-defined prohibited patterns. Simulations show that these strategies are efficient in enforcing content-based security policies at a low computational cost.

ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5541797

This study investigates theoretical model of tourist
intention in the context of mobile tourism guide. The research model consists of three constructs: mobile design quality, innovation characteristics, and intention to use mobile tourism guide. In order to investigate the effects of determinants and examine the relationships, partial least squares is employed for data analysis and research model development. The results show that mobile design quality and innovation quality significantly impact on tourists’ intention to use mobile tourism guide. Furthermore, mobile design quality has a strong influence on innovation characteristics, and cannot be the moderator on the relationship between innovation characteristics and tourists’ intention to use mobile tourism guide. Our findings propose theoretical model for mobile research and provide an important guideline for developing mobile application.

ABSTRACT This paper describes the design and development of a location-based mobile tourism application for cultural tourism in Malaysia by using a cloud-based platform. The architecture consists of three levels, front-end, middle-ware, and a back-end level that is built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform. The front-end level is a location-based mobile tourism application for Apple mobile devices, to explore nearby cultural tourism places. The middle-ware level provides a Web service to generate eXtensible Markup Language (XML) output from the relational database to exchange data between the mobile application and servers in the cloud. Finally, the back-end level that is built on AWS cloud platform provides services such as Apache Web server on Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2), MySQL database server on Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), and a cloud storage that uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), giving flexible, auto scalable, and secure servers to provide required services. The application is also caching images on the local storage and storing some data in SQLite database on the mobile device itself to provide some offline activities, and also decrease the number of sending requests to the servers, in order to save some data traffic.

Abstract—Recently, Automated checkout shopping trolley technologies have taken an advance step than the previous introduced self-checkout system in terms of greater convenience, ease-of-use and greater efficiency. As this technology is considerable new in the market of developing countries, hence it is vital to explore the perception of consumers toward the use of automated checkout trolley. The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions and expectations of both enterprise users and end users toward the proposed ...

“Mobile tourism” represents a relatively new trend in the field of tourism and involves the use of mobile devices as electronic tourist guides. While much of the underlying technology is already available, there are still open challenges with respect to design, usability, portability, functionality and implementation aspects. Most existing “mobile tourism” solutions either represent of-the-shelf applications with rigidly defined content or involve portable devices with networking capabilities that access tourist content with the requirement of constant airtime, i.e., continuous wireless network coverage. This paper presents the design and implementation issues of a “mobile tourism” research prototype, which brings together the main assets of the two aforementioned approaches. Namely, it enables the creation of portable tourist applications with rich content that matches user preferences. The users may download these personalized applications (optimized for their specific device’s model) either directly to their mobile device or first to a PC and then to a mobile terminal (through infrared or bluetooth). Thereafter, network coverage is not further required as the applications execute in standalone mode and may be updated when the user returns online. The dynamically created tourist applications also incorporate a “push model”, wherein new tourist content is forwarded to the mobile terminal with minimal user intervention as soon as it is added or updated by the administrator. Our prototype has been developed on the top of Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) which offers an ideal platform for the development of full-fledged, interactive and portable applications tailored for resource-constrained mobile devices. The paper presents our development experiences with J2ME and highlights its main advantages and shortcomings in relation to the implementation of such kind of applications. Finally, an empirical evaluation of user experience with the mobile application prototype is presented.

This study investigates the determinants of tourist intention and associations of perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, and perceived mobility in the context of mobile tourism guide. As a result of a few previous research studies the association of these constructs, especially in the context of mobile tourism guide. The research model is developed based on technology acceptance model 2 and extended model with perceived mobility constructs. The study employs convenience sampling technique to collect data from international tourists at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Thailand. The study employed WarpPLS 3.0 to analyze the proposed model in terms of validity, reliability, and path coefficients. The results evidence perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, and perceived mobility are the determinants of tourists' intention to use mobile tourism guide in all traveler types. Even thought, perceived ease-of-use is not the determinant of intention for both self-managed tour and packag...

This short paper deals with the problem of deriving personalized recommendations for daily sightseeing itineraries for tourists visiting any destination. Our approach considers selected places of interest that a traveller would potentially wish to visit and derives a near-optimal itinerary for each day of visit; the places of potential interest are selected based on stated or implied user preferences. Herein, we propose a heuristic solution to this problem and discuss its implementation aspects.

Resumo This work is part of a study to deliver design guidelines for developing outdoor mobile multimedia guides and refine methods to collect and analyse data from field work with visitors of cultural heritage settings. It concentrates on how tourists behave and the kinds of information they require in location-based contexts with mobile guides. Twelve participants took a tour, making use of a mobile guide app describing monuments in Brighton, England. Overall, 57 recommendations for improvement were gathered and ...

“Mobile tourism” represents a relatively new trend in the field of tourism and involves the use of mobile devices as electronic tourist guides. While much of the underlying technology is already available, there are still open challenges with respect to design, usability, portability, functionality and implementation aspects. Most existing “mobile tourism” solutions either represent of-the-shelf applications with rigidly defined content or involve portable devices with networking capabilities that access tourist content with the requirement of constant airtime, i.e., continuous wireless network coverage. This paper presents the design and implementation issues of a “mobile tourism” research prototype, which brings together the main assets of the two aforementioned approaches. Namely, it enables the creation of portable tourist applications with rich content that matches user preferences. The users may download these personalized applications (optimized for their specific device’s model) either directly to their mobile device or first to a PC and then to a mobile terminal (through infrared or bluetooth). Thereafter, network coverage is not further required as the applications execute in standalone mode and may be updated when the user returns online. The dynamically created tourist applications also incorporate a “push model”, wherein new tourist content is forwarded to the mobile terminal with minimal user intervention as soon as it is added or updated by the administrator. Our prototype has been developed on the top of Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) which offers an ideal platform for the development of full-fledged, interactive and portable applications tailored for resource-constrained mobile devices. The paper presents our development experiences with J2ME and highlights its main advantages and shortcomings in relation to the implementation of such kind of applications. Finally, an empirical evaluation of user experience with the mobile application prototype is presented.

Recently, Automated checkout shopping trolley technologies have taken an advance step than the previous introduced self-checkout system in terms of greater convenience, ease-of-use and greater efficiency. As this technology is considerable new in the market of developing countries, hence it is vital to explore the perception of consumers toward the use of automated checkout trolley. The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions and expectations of both enterprise users and end users toward the proposed checkout system for hypermarket in the context of Malaysia, as a typical paradigm of developing countries. Findings from this study indicate that both consumers and retailers possess positive attitude toward the automated checkout trolley system, and are enthusiastic to try this emerging technology. The main concerns of the users are the secureness of payment and the variability of payment methods, which forms their core criteria in determining whether to adopt the system. This study provides an understanding about the practicality and market condition of automated trolley system in the developing countries.

Mobile tourist guides have been in the spot light for the past decade and are becoming increasingly available in various forms to tourists visiting places. The majority of these mobile tourist guides are to be used via a constant network connection and some as proprietary standalone mobile applications installed on-device. Some are solely navigational assistants using positioning technologies for large

Abstract This short paper deals with the problem of deriving personalized recommendations for daily sightseeing itineraries for tourists visiting any destination. Our approach considers selected places of interest that a traveller would potentially wish to visit and derives a near-optimal itinerary for each day of visit; the places of potential interest are selected based on stated or implied user preferences. Herein, we propose a heuristic solution to this problem and discuss its implementation aspects.