Toward Geospatial Collaborative Tourism Recommender Systems

Tourism activities are highly dependent on spatial information. Finding the most interesting travel destinations and attractions and planning a trip are still open research issues to GIScience research applied to the tourism domain. Nowadays, huge amounts of information are available over the world wide web that may be useful in planning a visit to destinations and attractions. However, it is often time consuming for a user to select the most interesting destinations and attractions and plan a trip according to his own preferences. Tourism recommender systems (TRSs) can be used to overcome this information overload problem and to propose items taking into account the user preferences. This chapter reviews related topics in tourism recommender systems including different tourism recommendation approaches and user profile representation methods applied in the tourism domain. The authors illustrate the potential of tourism recommender systems as applied to the tourism domain by the implementation of an illustrative geospatial collaborative recommender system using the Foursquare dataset.

The Benefits of Applying GIS in Spiritual Tourism Management and Promotion

The main contribution of this chapter is to critically discuss the benefits of applying geographic information systems (GIS) as a tool for management and promotion of spiritual tourism circuits (STC) and ST destinations. This research-based chapter also examines the extent to which GIS can be used in spiritual tourism management and promotion, proposes a model for the use and benefits of GIS in spiritual tourism management and promotion in India and Pakistan, and proposes GIS connected STC. This chapter identifies the socio-economic and business benefits of applying GIS to spiritual tourism circuits (STC). In this research, the spiritual tourism product is exclusively based on spiritual place, sites, or destinations, which is also called spatial or geographical data.

Geographical Information System Applications Utilized in Museums in Turkey Within the Scope of the Cultural Heritage Tourism

Technology has penetrated every aspect of life and it proceeds with the aim of facilitating people's lives. Geographical information systems as a part of the developing technology provide services in every area with different forms. One of these areas is museology. The desire to make visual and written information and cultural heritage that are presented by museums with auditory and interactive experiences has brought together digital technologies and cultural and historical activities. From this point of view, the “Müze Asist” is a remarkable application in terms of the fact that it is a local app and in use in most of the museums in Turkey and the convenience provided for all tourists who want to visit a museum, especially for those who prefer self-guided tours. This chapter may be a guide to its objects and to the next researchers.

Framework for GeoSpatial Query Processing by Integrating Cassandra With Hadoop

We are moving towards digitization and making all our devices, such as sensors and cameras, connected to internet, producing bigdata. This bigdata has variety of data and has paved the way to the emergence of NoSQL databases, like Cassandra, for achieving scalability and availability. Hadoop framework has been developed for storing and processing distributed data. In this chapter, the authors investigated the storage and retrieval of geospatial data by integrating Hadoop and Cassandra using prefix-based partitioning and Cassandra's default partitioning algorithm (i.e., Murmur3partitioner) techniques. Geohash value is generated, which acts as a partition key and also helps in effective search. Hence, the time taken for retrieving data is optimized. When users request spatial queries like finding nearest locations, searching in Cassandra database starts using both partitioning techniques. A comparison on query response time is made so as to verify which method is more effective. Results show the prefix-based partitioning technique is more efficient than Murmur3 partitioning technique.

GIS-Based Decision Support System for Village Level

Decision support system (DSS) plays a vital role especially in rural areas to develop rural sector for sustainable development and socio-economic uplifting of the country. To make appropriate decisions and to develop village economy, decision support system is useful for the mandal revenue officer, collector, Surpanch, and different administrators. It deals both spatial and non-spatial data at village level and comprises various ancillary information including mandal maps and village-wise information of Anantapur and Kadapa districts of Andhra Pradesh such as number of houses, male and female, SC/ST/OBC/general (or) OC population, literate and illiterate population, total working and non-working population. Datasets are collected from district collector office, mandal revenue officer (MRO) and inserted in GIS database. This chapter makes an attempt to build features of various decisions at Anantapur and Kadapa districts by integrating various layers of information at village level.

The Value and Scope of GIS in Marketing and Tourism Management

Geographical information systems (GIS) are the systems that store location-based data and analyze them. GIS originated from the conventional cartographic techniques of simply drawing maps with a pencil and board. Following the adoption of computer technology, GIS further evolved as a geo-referenced dynamic information system, which can today be considered as a multi-disciplinary instrument that links different disciplines like geography, computer science, remote sensing, civil engineering, statistics, marketing, and other social and behavioral sciences. In this chapter, GIS is defined and its importance and functions are described in detail. Usage of GIS in marketing is explained, especially its development in marketing theory. Also, the value and scope of GIS in tourism management with a view to understand the spread of GIS applications in tourism is explored.

The Relationship Between the Geographical Information Systems and Rural Development

Geographical data systems (GIS), which enable the creation of entities that are the subject of tourism, tourism planning, the identification of impact areas of tourism values, and the sustainable utilization of tourism entities, are data-collection and decision-making systems that can contribute to tourism planning and the development of tourism Recently, tourists' interests have shifted from sea-, sand-, and sun-focused tourism to alternative tourism types; one of which is rural tourism. With rural tourism, it is expected that economical and socio-cultural opportunities for people who live in rural areas can be improved. The realization of this provides the concept of rural development. Today, in Turkey, 36.40% of the whole population still live in rural areas and agricultural activities are the most important income sources. Therefore, it is possible to investigate rural tourism and rural development in the Turkish context. This chapter deals with suggestions in terms of rural tourism and rural development by using GIS.

TCloud

This chapter proposes and develops a cloud-computing-based SDI model named as TCloud for sharing, analysis, and processing of spatial data particularly in the Temple City of India, Bhubaneswar. The main purpose of TCloud is to integrate all the spatial information such as tourism sites which include various temples, mosques, churches, monuments, lakes, mountains, rivers, forests, etc. TCloud can help the decision maker or planner or common users to get enough information for their further research and studies. It has used open source GIS quantum GIS for the development of spatial database whereas QGIS plugin has been linked with quantum GIS for invoking cloud computing environment. It has also discussed the various spatial overlay analysis in TCloud environment.

Geographical Patterns in the Tourist City

Understanding how tourists use space in urban environments has practical applications in destination management and planning. It reveals key issues for organizing facilities and essential services, creating new products, impact management, and other purposes related to urban tourism. The geotagged photos shared by Panoramio users, during their visit to the city of Lisbon between 2007 and 2014, allow the authors to incorporate into this chapter a quantitative and geographic reading on the tourist consumption of spaces within the city. In this chapter, they analyze the spatial distribution of tourists and its changes across time considering a period of 8 years. Furthermore, a regression analysis method was carried out in order to find the spatial relations between the observed pattern (geographical agglomeration of tourist ́s photos) and a set of 24 selected independent variables.

Geographical Information System in Eco-Tourism

Interest of the local population is an important consideration for sustainable development of a region. Researchers recently observed in their studies about the benefits the local population get while being involved in eco-tourism. Though many factors are considered to know how locals are benefited by eco-tourism, an interesting factor to be dealt with utmost care and concern is environmental and ecological issues arising out of these growth factors. All the possible technologies of computer application may be used to maximise the end needs of this specialised subject. One such application is GIS (geographical information system), which can be of great help in this concept. The GIS applications are recently used in the management of parks, facilities management, assessment of visual resources, and new areas identification for new tourism development initiatives.