Title: Evaluation of a web recommender system in electronic and mobile tourism

Authors: Damianos Gavalas; Michael Kenteris

Addresses: Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean, University Hill, GR-81100, Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece. ' Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean, University Hill, GR-81100, Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece

Abstract: Recommender systems are software frameworks that employ a specific type of information filtering technique, aiming at recommending information items or social elements that are likely to be of interest to the user. Herein, we present the evaluation results of the recently prototyped tourism recommender system (TRS). We followed a formal evaluation process to validate the usability of two versions of the TRS by users in realistic environments; the first is a typical web recommender system (wTRS), while the second is a system that enables tourist content recommendations addressed to mobile users (mTRS). The usability evaluation tests have been undertaken at the municipality of Mytilene, Greece.

Keywords: web recommender systems; wTRS; web engineering; electronic tourism; mobile tourism; mobile guides; e-tourism; m-tourism; context awareness; user profiles; user evaluation; field trials; sensor networks; tourism recommender systems; Greece; tourist content recommendations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWET.2012.045763

International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, 2012 Vol.7 No.1, pp.4 - 21

Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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