Fairness and Sustainability in Multistakeholder Tourism Recommender Systems

Abstract

In the travel industry, Tourism Recommender Systems (TRS) are gaining popularity as they simplify trip planning for travelers by offering personalized recommendations for accommodations, activities, destinations, and more.Ensuring fairness in TRS involves considering the needs and viewpoints of different stakeholders, including consumers, item providers, the platform, and society.Although previous research has focused on fairness in TRS from a multistakeholder perspective, little attention has been given to generating sustainable recommendations.This doctoral thesis introduces the concept of Societal Fairness (S-Fairness) to consider the impact of tourism on non-participating stakeholders (society) such as residents, who may be affected by tourism issues such as increased housing prices, environmental pollution, and traffic congestion.The objective of this research is to contribute to the field of TRS by (1) modeling sustainability for societal fairness, (2) developing a fair multistakeholder TRS that balances sustainability concerns with other stakeholders while minimizing trade-offs, and (3) evaluating the approach through user studies and offline dataset evaluation to ensure user acceptance of recommendations.