Tourism recommender systems: an overview

The amount of information available on the World Wide Web has increased considerably over the past decade. Information on travel destinations and their associated resources, such as hotels, restaurants, museums or events, etc., is commonly sought by potential tourists and can be useful to plan their trip. However, the list of possibilities offered by web search engines or specialised tourist sites can be overwhelming. Evaluating this long list of options is very complex and time consuming for tourists to choose the best destination suits to their needs. Computer techniques have been developed to facilitate this search as well as the extraction of relevant information. In this article, we will focus on the recommendation systems by providing a detailed and up-to-date review of the most commonly used profiling techniques and recommendation approaches in the field of tourism, with specific emphasis on content-based and collaborative approaches. Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.