An ASP-based system for e-tourism

Abstract

In this paper we present the IDUM system, a successful application of logic programming to e-tourism. IDUM exploits two technologies that are based on the state-of-the-art ASP system DLV: (i) a system for ontology representation and reasoning, called OntoDLV; and, (ii) H LεX a semantic information extraction tool. The core of IDUM is an ontology which models the domain of the touristic offers. The ontology is automatically populated by extracting the information contained in the touristic leaflets produced by tour operators. A set of specifically devised ASP programs is used to reason on the information contained in the ontology for selecting the holiday packages that best fit the customer needs. An intuitive web-based user interface eases the task of interacting with the system for both the customers and the operators of a travel agency. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.