TravelBuddy: Interactive travel route recommendation with a visual scene interface

Abstract

In this work, we propose a convenient system for trip planning and aim to change the behavior of trip planners from exhaustively searching information to receiving useful travel recommendations. Given the essential and optional user inputs, our system automatically recommends a route that suits the traveler based on a real-time route planning algorithm and allows the user to make adjustment according to their preferences. We construct a traveling database by collecting photos taken around famous attractions and analyzing these photos to extract each attraction's travel information including popularity, typical stay time, available visiting time in a day, and visual scenes of different time. All the extracted travel information are presented to the user to help him/her efficiently know more about different attractions so that he/she can modify the inputs to obtain a more favorable travel route. The experimental results show that our system can effectively help the user to plan the journey. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.