Effectiveness of Mobile Recommender Systems for Tourist Destinations: A User Evaluation

Interaction Challenges for Intelligent Assistants

Volume

Papers from the 2007 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

Mobile recommender systems have the potential to substantially enrich tourist experiences. As their handling marks a big challenge for ordinary users, its acceptance can only be evaluated when utilized by the intended user group itself - real tourists. In a field trial in Görlitz (Germany), 421 tourists explored the city with one of two different mobile information systems, a proactive recommender of personalized tours and a pull service presenting context- based information on demand. A third group of tourists was tracked by GPS receivers during their exploration of the destination relying on traditional means of information. Results point out that both mobile applications gained a high level of acceptance by providing an experience very similar to a traditional guided tour. Compared to the group tracked by GPS loggers, tourists using a mobile information system discovered four times more sights and stayed at them twice as long.