A mobile 3D-GIS hybrid recommender system for tourism

The amount of touristic and travel information existing on the Internet is overwhelming. Recommender systems are typically used to filter irrelevant information and to provide personalized and relevant services to tourists. In this context, mobile devices are particularly useful because of their ubiquitous nature that turns them into an attractive platform for assisting on-the-move tourists to choose points of interest to visit according to their physical location. However, mobile devices also present several usability limitations that should be considered in order to provide information in a direct and intuitive way. In this paper, we present a novel mobile recommender system that brings together a hybrid recommendation engine and a mobile 3D GIS architecture. This system allows tourists to benefit from innovative features such as a 3D map-based interface and real-time location-sensitive recommendations. The details related to the design and implementation of the proposed solution are also presented, along with an empirical evaluation of user experience with the mobile application. (c) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.