Collecting Tour Plans from Potential Visitors: A Web-Based Interactive Tour-Planner and a Strategic Use of Its Log Data

Abstract

It is often a hard task for novices to design their tour itineraries when visiting unfamiliar destinations on a tight schedule. To relieve them from such difficulty, we have developed a computer-aided tour planner, called CT-Planner. Unlike previous tour recommenders, CT-Planner prompts/encourages its users to design their tour plans with the system in a collaborative manner. This tool does not mandate that users specify their requests at the beginning of tour planning. In addition, it allows users to specify both direct requests (i.e., which points of interest (POIs) they want to visit or not) and indirect requests (i.e., what kind of tours they like). This chapter introduces its latest version, CT-Planner 4.3, which is available online at http://ctplanner.jp. We then discuss how the log data of such computer-aided tour planner will be highly useful for marketing analysis, since this data can tell, for instance, which POIs attract users’ attention and predict what kind of tour itineraries are endorsed by which group of users. Finally, we introduce our future plan that involves users in the creation of destination data for CT-Planner, consequently expanding its service coverage.