A personalized route recommendation service for theme parks using RFID information and tourist behavior

Like any other industry, theme parks are now facing severe challenges from other entertainment competitors. To survive in a rapidly changing environment, creating high quality products/services in terms of consumer preference has become a critical issue for theme park managers. To fulfill these needs, this paper develops a route recommendation system that supplies theme park tourists with the facilities they should visit and in what order. In the proposed system, tourist behaviors (i.e. visiting sequences and corresponding timestamps) are persistently collected through a Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) system and stored in a route database. The database is then segmented into sub-groups based on the similarity among tourists' visiting sequences and time lengths. Whenever a visitor requests a route recommendation service, the system identifies the sub-group most similar to that visitor's personal preferences and intended visitation time. Based on the retrieved visiting behavior data and current facility queuing situation identified by the RFID system, the proposed system generates a proper route suggestion for the visitor. A simulation case is implemented to show the feasibility of the proposed system. Based on the experimental results, it is clear that the recommended route satisfies visitor requirements using previous tourists' favorite experiences. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.