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Digital Systems for Tourism
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Digital Systems for Tourism

A topical collection in Digital (ISSN 2673-6470).

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Editors

Prof. Dr. Costas Vassilakis

E-Mail Website
Collection Editor
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of the Peloponnese, Akadimaikou G.K. Vlachou, 22100 Tripoli, Greece
Interests: information systems; recommender systems; semantic web technologies and applications; cultural informatics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. George Lepouras

E-Mail Website
Collection Editor
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of the Peloponnese, Akadimaikou G.K. Vlachou, 22100 Tripoli, Greece
Interests: human–computer interaction issues (especially profiling, multilingual, multicultural issues); virtual reality; augmented reality and electronic games
Dr. Manolis Wallace

E-Mail Website
Collection Editor
ΓΑΒ LAB—Knowledge and Uncertainty Research Laboratory, Campus of the University of Peloponnese, 22132 Trípoli, Greece
Interests: cultural informatics; semantics; uncertainty
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Topical Collection Information

Dear Colleagues,

Digital systems are increasingly being used to support multiple stakeholders and tasks in the tourism sector, including the provision of tourist information and personalized planning to individual tourists and tourist groups, fostering the work of tourism-related enterprises, underpin tourism planning, and so forth. To this end, relevant digital systems employ novel or suitably adapted methods and algorithms and exploit multiple sources of data, such as tourist profiles, linked open data, and social media.

This Topical Collection aims to promote new methods, algorithm applications, and platforms related to the area of applying digital systems in the tourism sector. In this Topical Collection, all aspects of the area of digital systems in the tourism sector, from user tourist profiling to recommender systems for tourism and from social media analysis for tourism to concrete and novel tourist and platform applications. Submissions should describe original, significant, and unpublished work. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • Recommender systems for tourism;
  • Personalized experiences generation for tourism;
  • Tourist profiling for personalization;
  • Smart tourism applications;
  • Social media analysis for tourism;
  • Opinion mining for tourist enterprises and destinations;
  • Virtual and augmented reality for the tourism sector;
  • Analysis of big data for tourism;
  • GIS technologies for tourism;
  • Novel tourism applications;
  • Case studies of real-world tourism platforms and applications;
  • Cross-disciplinary approaches on digital systems for tourism;
  • Linked open data for tourism;
  • Digital systems in tourism planning

Prof. Dr. Costas Vassilakis
Prof. Dr. George Lepouras
Dr. Manolis Wallace
Collection Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the collection website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Digital is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (5 papers)

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2024

Jump to: 2022

31 pages, 31664 KiB  
Article
Creating Location-Based Mobile Applications for Tourism: A Virtual AR Guide for Western Macedonia
by Athanasios Evagelou, Alexandros Kleftodimos and Georgios Lappas
Digital 2024, 4(1), 271-301; https://doi.org/10.3390/digital4010014 - 01 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1180
Abstract
Augmented reality (AR) applications are currently used in many fields for communication and educational purposes. Tourism is also a sector where augmented reality is used for destination marketing and cultural heritage promotion. This study will focus on mobile location-based AR applications and their [...] Read more.
Augmented reality (AR) applications are currently used in many fields for communication and educational purposes. Tourism is also a sector where augmented reality is used for destination marketing and cultural heritage promotion. This study will focus on mobile location-based AR applications and their potential in tourism. Such applications can guide tourists to places of interest and enhance their overall experience. The aim of this paper is to present a mobile application that was created for tourists visiting the region of Western Macedonia, Greece. The application was developed in order to guide the users in the region, entertain them, and educate them about the region’s sights, cultural heritage, and other special characteristics. The paper also aims to present a large set of features that are present in the application, including various types of AR (marker-based, markerless, and location-based) in order to provide designers who wish to create AR applications for tourism with new ideas. The application was validated by a usability test, and its features were evaluated by 39 participants who completed a questionnaire with 29 Likert-scale items. This procedure revealed the level of acceptance for the application features, and valuable feedback was also received during a discussion with the participants about how the application could be upgraded in the future. Full article
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2022

Jump to: 2024

14 pages, 6124 KiB  
Article
When BERT Started Traveling: TourBERT—A Natural Language Processing Model for the Travel Industry
by Veronika Arefeva and Roman Egger
Digital 2022, 2(4), 546-559; https://doi.org/10.3390/digital2040030 - 11 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2409
Abstract
In recent years, Natural Language Processing (NLP) has become increasingly important for extracting new insights from unstructured text data, and pre-trained language models now have the ability to perform state-of-the-art tasks like topic modeling, text classification, or sentiment analysis. Currently, BERT is the [...] Read more.
In recent years, Natural Language Processing (NLP) has become increasingly important for extracting new insights from unstructured text data, and pre-trained language models now have the ability to perform state-of-the-art tasks like topic modeling, text classification, or sentiment analysis. Currently, BERT is the most widespread and widely used model, but it has been shown that a potential to optimize BERT can be applied to domain-specific contexts. While a number of BERT models that improve downstream tasks’ performance for other domains already exist, an optimized BERT model for tourism has yet to be revealed. This study thus aimed to develop and evaluate TourBERT, a pre-trained BERT model for the tourism industry. It was trained from scratch and outperforms BERT-Base in all tourism-specific evaluations. Therefore, this study makes an essential contribution to the growing importance of NLP in tourism by providing an open-source BERT model adapted to tourism requirements and particularities. Full article
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22 pages, 2066 KiB  
Article
Greek Hotels’ Web Traffic: A Comparative Study Based on Search Engine Optimization Techniques and Technologies
by Konstantinos I. Roumeliotis, Nikolaos D. Tselikas and Christos Tryfonopoulos
Digital 2022, 2(3), 379-400; https://doi.org/10.3390/digital2030021 - 11 Jul 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3706
Abstract
Currently, websites rely heavily on digital marketing, notably search engine optimization (SEO), for success. In the COVID-19 era, hotels have to employ every feasible means to stay afloat despite the bleak business and travel conditions. Many of them have already invested in digital [...] Read more.
Currently, websites rely heavily on digital marketing, notably search engine optimization (SEO), for success. In the COVID-19 era, hotels have to employ every feasible means to stay afloat despite the bleak business and travel conditions. Many of them have already invested in digital marketing, especially SEO, by applying SEO techniques to their websites to attract more visitors and bookings. This research examines hotels’ websites regarding the SEO techniques they have applied and their impact on web traffic to their websites. During a one-year observation period (February 2021–February 2022), we collected and analyzed web data from 309 top-listed Greek hotels using our own-developed software. By creating and following a specific methodology, we came to valuable conclusions. In addition, we used fuzzy cognitive mapping to develop an exploratory model. From the descriptive analysis and technical SEO perspective, we have concluded that hotels websites’ traffic and, by extension, their long-term viability are inextricably intertwined. Existing and future SEO marketers may benefit from our research’s time-accurate insights on hotel SEO tactics. Full article
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14 pages, 3000 KiB  
Article
ACUX Typology: A Harmonisation of Cultural-Visitor Typologies for Multi-Profile Classification
by Markos Konstantakis, Yannis Christodoulou, Georgios Alexandridis, Alexandros Teneketzis and George Caridakis
Digital 2022, 2(3), 365-378; https://doi.org/10.3390/digital2030020 - 24 Jun 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3034
Abstract
The modern cultural industry and the related academic sectors have shown increased interest in Cultural User eXperience (CUX) research, since it constitutes a critical factor to examine and apply when presenting cultural content. Recent CUX studies show that visitors tend to carry their [...] Read more.
The modern cultural industry and the related academic sectors have shown increased interest in Cultural User eXperience (CUX) research, since it constitutes a critical factor to examine and apply when presenting cultural content. Recent CUX studies show that visitors tend to carry their own cultural characteristics and preferences when visiting destinations of cultural interest, thus obtaining a virtually unique experience. To cope with this tendency, various research efforts have been made to identify different profiles of cultural visitors based on their background and preferences and classify them into distinct visitor types. In this paper, we proposed the ACUX (Augmented Cultural User eXperience) typology for classifying visitors of cultural destinations. The proposed typology aims to provide the multi-profile classification of cultural visitors based on their visiting preferences. Methodology-wise, the ACUX typology was the output of a harmonisation process of existing cultural-visitor typologies that base their classification on visiting preferences. The proposed typology was evaluated in juxtaposition with the harmonised typologies from which it was derived through an experiment conducted using a recommender and a dataset of TripAdvisor user responses. The evaluation showed that the ACUX typology achieved a more accurate profiling of cultural visitors, enabling them to reduce information overload by directly suggesting content that is more likely to meet their diverse preferences and needs. Full article
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15 pages, 994 KiB  
Article
Gamification in Tourism: A Design Framework for the TRIPMENTOR Project
by Elina Roinioti, Eleana Pandia, Markos Konstantakis and Yannis Skarpelos
Digital 2022, 2(2), 191-205; https://doi.org/10.3390/digital2020012 - 09 May 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 4449
Abstract
In this paper, we discuss the gamification strategies and methodologies used by TRIPMENTOR—a game-oriented cultural tourism application in the region of Attica. Its primary purpose is to provide visitors with rich media content via the web and mobile environments by redirecting travellers, highlighting [...] Read more.
In this paper, we discuss the gamification strategies and methodologies used by TRIPMENTOR—a game-oriented cultural tourism application in the region of Attica. Its primary purpose is to provide visitors with rich media content via the web and mobile environments by redirecting travellers, highlighting points of interest, and providing information for tour operators. Gamification is a critical component of the project; it relates users to specific sites and activities, improves their visiting experiences, and encourages a constant interaction with the application through a playful experience. In TRIPMENTOR, gamification serves both as a tourism marketing strategy and as a tool for encouraging users to share their experiences while exploring Attica in a way designed to meet their personal needs, interests, and habits. This paper aims to describe and analyse the gamification mechanisms applied, following the Octalysis framework, and discuss the opportunities and challenges of gamification as a tourist marketing strategy. Full article
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