Electronic mobile guides: a survey

Open-air heritage sites have started making use of different types of tourist guides in order to attract a larger number of visitors as well as educate them in a more challenging manner. However, most of them are still using static audio-visual guides which usually require input from visitors to operate. On the contrary, location-based heritage guides offer a number of advantages over traditional tourist guides ranging from advanced visualisation to intuitive interaction. This paper, presents a novel multimodal mobile framework for tourist guides which can be used in any open-air heritage exhibition. The proposed mobile system allows tourists to switch between three different presentation guides including map, virtual and augmented reality. Localisation of the visitors is established based on position and orientation sensors which are integrated on light-weight handheld devices. To illustrate some of the capabilities of the mobile system two case-studies are presented.

2008 7th International Conference on Mobile Business, 2008

The penetration of high-end mobile devices equipped with GPS and enhanced with multimedia features together with decreasing mobile data prices have resulted in larger usage of mobile services. One of the application domains particularly well-suited for mobile services is tourism, not least since tourists can be assisted especially during the vacation itself. Currently, there is a proliferation of such mobile tourist guides, proposing an unmanageable number of diverse functionalities. To counteract this situation, the contribution of this paper is threefold. First, an evaluation framework is proposed, comprising both, a classification of mobile tourist services and a categorization of their delivery aspects in terms of several orthogonal dimensions. Second, on basis of this framework, four representative mobile tourist guides are evaluated, thereby demonstrating the frameworks' applicability. Third, several lessons learned are discussed, thereby shedding light on the current state of effort in the area of mobile tourist guides.

Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference …, 1997

This paper discusses the issues related to the application of wireless communication and positioning technologies to the development of hand-held electronic tour guides. These issues are discussed presenting HIPS, a project recently funded by the European Commission that aims at developing a hand-held electronic tour guide allowing tourists to navigate both the physical space and a related information space when visiting a museum or a city. HIPS detects the position of the tourist and provides personalised and contextual information. The methodological approach of the project plays a fundamental role for the development of such a system: user-centred design and scenario-based design are means for assuring that the final system is appropriate to the user and to the context of use. The usability issues of HIPS are also discussed comparing its features to other audio guides like the one currently available in the Louvre Museum.

Mobile tourism guides have placed themselves, in recent years, as essential apps for any smartphone or tablet user. Within this context and throughout its course, the mesh-t project: pervasive, ubiquitous and context-aware technologies in tourism, has sought out to approach the potential of these e-tourism applications in integrated services, through a transdisciplinary effort between the academic and professional world. Waging on ubiquity, participatory culture and transmedia storytelling as core concepts, within the mesh-t project different technical solutions have been developed in an attempt to create a unique and flowing experience. This paper describes work done on evaluating the usability of the outdoor mobile guide, one of those abovementioned solutions, by outlining the selected methodology, which included a combination of heuristic analysis and field trials, and presenting some of the preliminary results gathered so far.

Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2000

In this paper, we describe our experiences of developing and evaluating GUIDE, an intelligent electronic tourist guide. The GUIDE system has been built to overcome many of the limitations of the traditional information and navigation tools available to city visitors. For example, group-based tours are inherently inflexible with fixed starting times and fixed durations and (like most guidebooks) are constrained by the need to satisfy the interests of the majority rather than the specific interests of individuals. Following a period of requirements capture, involving experts in the field of tourism, we developed and installed a system for use by visitors to Lancaster. The system combines mobile computing technologies with a wireless infrastructure to present city visitors with information tailored to both their personal and environmental contexts. In this paper we present an evaluation of GUIDE, focusing on the quality of the visitor's experience when using the system.

Journal of Network and …, 2012

Portable devices are increasingly employed in a wide range of mobile guidance applications. Typical examples are guides in urban areas, museum guides, and exhibition space aids. The demand is for the delivery of context-specific services, wherein the context is typically identified by a combination of data related to location, time, user profile, device profile, network conditions and usage scenario. A context-aware mobile guide is intended to provide guidance services adjusted to the context of the received request. The adjustment may refer to tailoring the user interface to the perceived context, as well as delivering the right type of information to the right person at the right time and the right location. It may also refer to intermediary adaptation, as in the case of mobile multimedia transmission. This paper offers a taxonomy of mobile guides considering multiple criteria. The taxonomy considers several aspects of the mobile applications space, including context awareness, client architectures, mobile user interfaces, as well as offered functionalities, highlighting functional, architectural, technological, and implementation issues.

2000

In this paper, we describe our experiences of developing and evaluating GUIDE, an intelligent electronic tourist guide. The GUIDE system has been built to overcome many of the limitations of the traditional information and navigation tools available to city visitors. For example, group-based tours are inherently inflexible with fixed starting times and fixed durations and (like most guidebooks) are constrained by the need to satisfy the interests of the majority rather than the specific interests of individuals. Following a period of requirements capture, involving experts in the field of tourism, we developed and installed a system for use by visitors to Lancaster. The system combines mobile computing technologies with a wireless infrastructure to present city visitors with information tailored to both their personal and environmental contexts. In this paper we present an evaluation of GUIDE, focusing on the quality of the visitor's experience when using the system.

Information Technology & Tourism, 2019

The paper presents an interactive electronic guide application prototype able to recommend personalized multiple-day tourist itineraries to mobile web users. The proposed application relies on an evolutionary optimizer that allows the determination, in an acceptable time, of a near-optimal user-adapted tour for each day of the visit by considering different conflicting objectives. The tour optimizer automatically plans the itinerary by selecting the sights of potential interest based on user preferences, the available visit time considered on a daily basis, opening days and hours, visiting times, accessibility of the places of interest and weather forecasting. The interactive functionalities and facilities provided by the application are illustrated along with the model used to adapt the tourist itinerary to user preferences and constraints. An experimental qualitative and quantitative evaluation has been performed to assess the validity of the guide prototype. Particular attention has been devoted to the usability of the application and its graphic unit interface along with user satisfaction.

Proceedings of the …, 2000

Contemporary Trends in Tourism and Hospitality 2013, Novi Sad, 2013

In the e-Turist project we developed a mobile application that provide experience comparable to that offered by a professional tour guide, but tailored to each individual tourist. The tourist can enter his interests (entertainment, active tourism, gastronomy, cultural and natural heritage), the available time and any special requirements he/she may have. Based on these and other data such as opening time, the application prepares a personalized sightseeing program. To this end, it uses a recommender system that combines the extensive knowledge on tourism provided by Turistica with state-of-the art intelligent computer methods developed at Jožef Stefan Institute. Afterwards, the application guides the tourist using the GPS, providing a multilingual written and voice description accompanied by photos. The tourist may comment and rate each sight, which is then used by the recommender system and tourism services providers to improve their services.

2008

In this paper we present the features of UbiquiTO, an adaptive mobile guide which helps tourists, and in particular mobile workers, in organizing their free time. The system provides support adapting its advices to the preferences and features of the user, her location, her device and the current context conditions. A relevant aspect of the adaptation is that the user can use the device she likes, choosing the modality of localization, managing her model and choosing the version of the system (adapted or not). * We are very grateful to Ilaria Amendola,

Tourists invest a great amount of time searching on Internet when planning for a trip. This is mainly because they are always seeking for new experiences, new locations and new attractions to visit. They try to find information that gives them an idea of the experiences they can find in their holiday destination. Smartphones and tablets have become a necessity in this age of wireless communications allowing travelers to get the information they need without time or location restrictions. This article examines different aspects of mobile applications geared to tourism, the way they are used, and the involved technologies.

مجلة کلیة السیاحة والفنادق. جامعة المنصورة

Technology and artificial intelligence are changing traveling and guiding scenario. Smartphone is considered the most used nowadays for all categories. Smartphone applications are important in our life. There is now a variety of mobile applications available to assist passengers before,

Revista GEMInIS, 2011

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 ...

Proceedings of the 5th …, 2006

The use of mobile devices as electronic tourist guides represents a recent trend that brings the concept of 'mobile tourism' into the spotlight. While much of the underlying technology is already available, there are still open challenges with respect to design, usability, portability 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 browse tourist mobile portals with the requirement of constant airtime, i.e. continuous wireless network coverage. This paper presents a 'mobile tourism' research prototype which brings together the main assets of the two abovementioned approaches. Namely, it enables the creation of portable tourist applications with rich content that matches user preferences. The users may download these customizable applications 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. Our prototype has been developed on the top of Java 2 Micro Edition which offers an ideal platform for the development of fullfledged, interactive and portable applications tailored to resource-constrained mobile devices.