Logic-Based Technologies for e-Tourism: The iTravel System

iTravel is an e-tourism system conceived for helping both employees and customers of a travel agency in finding the best possible travel solution in a short time. The core of iTravel is an ontology which models the domain of the touristic offers. The key features of the system are (1) the automatic population of the ontology of the travel offers, obtained by extracting the information contained in the touristic leaflets which are sent by the tour operators to the travel agencies; (2) the intelligent touristic-package search, which mimics the typical deductions of a travel agent. Both features were designed and developed by using two logic-based technologies founded on DLV, a state-of-the-art Answer Set Programming system, namely OntoDLV and H iota L epsilon X. The system is developed under PIA project funded by the Calabrian Region, and is a successful result of technological transfer program aimed at a commercial and practical use of basic research on ontology and logic programming In the paper we describe the key features of iTravel and report the results of some benchmarks on both the accuracy of the information extraction process and the efficiency of the reasoning process. Experiments are carried out on real-world data, and confirm the effectiveness of our solution. We also discuss practices and experiences of innovation transfer within the project.