A study of User Participatory Mobile App

Local organizations engage in various advertising activities both online and offline to attract new and returning tourists. In addition to official websites and promotional materials, many tourism organizations provide real-time information via social network services (SNS) such as Twitter and Facebook. Individuals interested in traveling collect related information from books or the Internet. Some create and distribute self-created content, comprised of information, photos and videos. Such user generated content (UGC), which spread to other users through blogs and other SNS, demonstrate that information providers need not necessarily be companies or organizations. In other words, individual users are playing a more active role in the generation of information. However, information on tourist destinations still tends to have a one-way flow, and updates are made only periodically. Users planning to visit tourist attractions find a lack of information on websites, which are not updated in real-time. This study develops a user-participating app that sustains the interest of users towards tourism resources, so as to attract more tourists to regional tourist destinations. (Abstract)