Web Based Tourism Information System Using Geographical Information System (Gis) - A Case Study
Web Based Tourism Information System Using Geographical Information System (Gis) - A Case Study
ABSTRACT
World-wide web is fast becoming useful tool for the tourism industry
and it presents a platform that brings products and services to the
tourists. A web based tourism information system may provide on-line
brochures along with both value and services. Tourists generally want
to find objects of tourism and amenities with reference to their geographic
position and surroundings. In many cases, it is not satisfying to find
a good hotel without a reference to restaurants, sights or event locations
located nearby. This case study on web-based tourism information
system using GIS for Chandigarh city takes into account the user needs
to present the tourism objects in geographic context on interactive
tourist maps. This city is rapidly becoming a hot spot for tourists from
around the world because of its exotic locations and hospitality facilities.
In recent years, it is developing into a world class IT destination as
well. Therefore, city’s tourism sector may be promoted by global
marketing of its tourist attractions, facilities and services.
1.0 INTRODUCTION
exchange earnings from tourism also grew in 2006 by 14.6% from 2005.
While the growth in tourism has been impressive, India’s share in global
tourism scenario and earnings is quite insignificant. It is an accepted fact
that India has great potential for development of tourism. World Travel and
Tourism council (WTTC) has identified India as one of the foremost
growth centers in the world in the coming decade. Tourism is the third
largest net earner of foreign exchange for the country and is also one of
the sectors employing the largest number of manpower.
In recent times, Institutes of Hotel Management continued to be the
backbone of manpower training for hospitality industry in the country.
Diploma courses offered by these Institutes were upgraded to degree
courses. The scheme of ‘Capacity Building for Service Providers’ also
continued to be implemented for providing basic skills to unorganized
sector service providers engaged in activities having direct interaction with
the tourists.
GIS in tourism
Finding geographic
Planning Information of any
destination or region
Development for tour.
Chandigarh, the capital city of states of Punjab and Haryana is the first
planned city of India (Figure 2). It is a Union Territory, administered by
the Government of India. Le Corbusier, the famous French architect-
planner of this city conceived the master plan of Chandigarh as analogous
to a human body with a clearly defined head (capital complex), heart (city
centre), lungs (leisure valley and gardens), the limbs (cultural and educational
5.0 OBJECTIVES
Purpose of this study is to explore the role of GIS and Internet together,
in the current scenario of new and emerging technologies for the area of
tourism/hospitality; and to develop a web based tourism information system.
With the world-wide web, people have access to more information than
ever before. However, too much information from too many source cause
an information overload. Web-based GIS applications are becoming
significant in disseminating geographical information on the Internet because
of their platform independence, interactivity, and wide accessibility.
Therefore, objectives of this study are:
1. To develop a GIS enabled web-based information system prototype
that should provide the tourists with their desired information on
tourism/hospitality
2. To develop a prototype application that showcases the tourist and other
facilities of the city that should lead to promotion of tourism in the
city
3. To develop suitable query tools for the prototype system
6.0 METHODOLOGY
Figure 3 elaborates methodological steps involved in developing
Chandigarh tourism information system prototype:
Data used
i. Spatial data: Survey of India Topographical map, other collateral maps
and images of the city.
ii. Non-spatial data: Information and history about tourist attractions of
the city, services and facilities were acquired from various resources
such as tourism related websites and from other relevant agencies/
departments. Field based interviews on the user interests provided the
input in regard to the data they may be interested in when searching
82 JOHAR – Journal of Hospitality Application & Research Vol. 3 No.2
Chandigarh
tourism
Tourism
worldwide
Determining requirement of
rourism in relation to web
GIS What can be the
Web GIS contribution of GIS to
portray and promote
System prototype
architecture design
Primary data
Colletion
Customization / Enhancement
of Mapxtreme 2005
Web
site
User interface design
Evaluation
Results
Client
Client
1. Client - This is a typical Web interface with HTML and forms a simple
client of Internet GIS. As this type of interface possess very limited user
interactivity, as a result it is not possible for the users to interact with
the spatial objects and maps. In order to overcome this problem and
provide the user with an interface to interact with the spatial data,
alternative clients using Web add-ons were developed. These types of
alternative interactive clients include dynamic HTML and client-side
applications such as plug-ins, Java applets, and ActiveX controls (Peng
& Tsou, 2003).
2. Web server with application server - Web server and application server
constitutes the second component of the Internet GIS. A Web server is
also called as the HTTP server. The HTTP server is responsible for
replying to the requests from the clients. The Web server can reply in
several ways to the client by sending the existing HTML documents or
the map images; or by sending Java applets or ActiveX controls; or by
passing requests to and invoking other programs that can process the
inquiry. Application server receives requests from the Web server. When
the Web server receives a request that needs to be processed by some
other program, it passes the requests to the Application Server which in
turn searches for the respective applicable application program e.g. map
server and then passes on the request to process it. The application server
acts as a bridge or connector between the Web server and the map server.
3. Data server - A data server is responsible for maintaining the spatial
as well as non-spatial data in a relational or non-relational database
structures. The data server responds to the requests sent through the
SQL by a client or the map server for the required data, and thus also
called as an SQL server.
4. Map server - Map server is a major workhorse component that fulfills
spatial queries, conducts spatial analysis, and generates and delivers maps
to the client based on the user’s request (Peng & Tsou, 2003). Map server
performs the GIS functions or services such as query filtering, data extraction,
geocoding, spatial analysis, map-making, etc. Output from the map server
is either of the two forms - feature data sent to the client for manipulation
by the user or a simple map image in a graphic format. There are many
web mapping servers and image servers running around the world.
An overview of the software
MapInfo corporation’s windows software development toolkit
MapXtreme 2005 allows .NET-experienced developers to create powerful
84 JOHAR – Journal of Hospitality Application & Research Vol. 3 No.2
DIGITAL ROAD
CHANDIGARH
TRASPORT BUS ROUTS
CORPORATION
DATA
PRIMARY DATA PREPARATION
TOURIST ATTRACTIONS
INTERNET WEBSITES,
NEWSPAPER ETC
GIS DATA BASE
MINISTRY OF
TOURISM
INDIA
CHANDIGARH
Execute prototype
Implementation / optimize
Customeer
Feedback Feedback
From To
8.0 CONCLUSIONS
Web GIS based tourism information system prototype should be useful
as online interactive guide for the tourists. This is capable of providing both
spatial and non-spatial tourism information. Customization carried out
should also allow enhancements with added functionalities of finding a
location through queries, hyperlinking the features and proximity search.
This Web GIS based application can assist the prospective domestic and
foreign tourists to the city in advance planning of their tour in time and
with greater spatial details at their disposal. Similarly, tourism related
departments, agencies, hospitality industries and other services should also
benefit in terms of being able to participate in the global marketing of their
tourism products and services. However, this will be appropriate to enumerate
the advantages and limitations of this prototype web GIS based tourist
information system. Advantages foreseen are as follows:
● This application should enable even naive users who are not familiar
with GIS to browse the tourism spatial content through Web over the
Internet.
● This application should help the tourists in making adequate
arrangements before finalizing and undertaking the tour.
● This application should improve the quality and level of web information.
● This should serve as a utility for the public user as well as a marketing
tool for the city tourism management to promote and attract tourists.
● Data can be periodically updated and maintained in real time and space.
There are certain limitations as well with the GIS data involved in the
application and the prototype application. These are:
● Technical barrier in the regions with low Internet access speeds. In
90 JOHAR – Journal of Hospitality Application & Research Vol. 3 No.2
REFERENCES
Bernhardsen, T. (1999). Geographic information systems - an introduction
(2nd edition). Wiley International, New York.
Berno Tracy. (1999). When a guest is a guest - Cook Islanders view of tourism.
Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 656 - 675.
Dockkey Kim & Myungshin Chae, (2004). GIS for a policy decision support
in national tourism portal. 24th Annual ESRI User Conference, San Diego,
CA, USA.
Dondo, C. Bhunu, S. T. Rivett, U., (2002). GIS in tourism - a Zimbabwean
perspective, International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing,
Vol 34:6(6), pp. 197 - 200.
Duran, Z., Garagon Dogru, A., Toz, G. (2003). Protecting cultural heritage
by new technologies. In: International Symposium CIPA, Turkey.
Goyal, B, Duen-Ren Liu, Mark Coyle, Shashi Shekhar and Shyamsundar
Sarkar, (1997). Data models in the geographic information systems.
Communications of the ACM, vol. 40, Issue 4, pp. 103 - 111.
Holm-Pedersen, J. (1994). GIS - a new tool for tourism. Paper presented in
94th European conference: GIS in business, Amsterdam.
McAdam, David. (1999). The value and scope of geographical information
systems in tourism management. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Vol. 7,
No. 1.
Mckercher, Bob (1996). Differences between tourism and recreation in parks.
Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 563-575.
O’Looney, John (2004). Using ArcIMS to develop location-based tourism
information systems. 24th Annual ESRI User Conference, San Diego, CA.
Peng Zhong-Ren and Tsou Ming-Hsiang. (2003). Internet GIS: distributed
geographic information services for the internet and wireless networks. John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Pulusani, Preetha (2001). Internet GIS - one perspective. Proceedings of
MapIndia 2001 conference, http://www.gisdevelopment.net.
Shneiderman, B (1997). Designing information-abundant sites web sites:
issues and recommendations, International Journal of Human Computer
Studies, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 5-30.
WTO (2001). Concept of Sustainable Tourism. http:// www.worldtourism.org/
sustainable/concepts.htm