Deploying thick mobile clients using thin client architecture: A case in mobile tourist guides

Abstract

This paper introduces an approach of enhancing tourism web sites, giving the ability for such sites to be used as a tool to allow tourists to tag content of choice for downloading and viewing on their own mobile device whilst on visit. Tourists, upon installation to their mobile device, can view content material and a map of Mytilene (Lesvos, Greece) without the need to “connect” to any mobile operator network, thereby saving high roaming charges. Our casestudy has been the design and implementation of a Multi-Platform Mobile Tourist Guide system for the Municipality of Mytilene (Greece), which uses a thin PC client via Internet to present tourist content giving the user the opportunity to select content of choice and the ability to dynamically build a thick client mobile tourist application or use the PDA Installation available at the Municipal tourist office.