Smart Tourism
Smart tourism that provides real-time and personal information support to tourists is emerging. In this research, we are studying technologies that can contribute to solving social problems such as over-tourism and disaster prevention by providing appropriate information to tourists by estimating and predicting the condition of them from sensor information such as GPS.
Overview
Tourism is the activity in an unknown destination for a tourist. For smooth sightseeing in unknown areas, various information support is required, such as which sightseeing spots are most satisfactory, which sightseeing spots are currently popular, and how to avoid congestion. In the past, analog media such as maps and guidebooks played such a role, but with the digitalization of information distribution media via the Web and the Internet that emerged in the 1990s, a new form of tourism called e-tourism emerged. With the advent of mobile terminals and advances in sensor technology, it has become possible to measure the state of tourists in real time. On the other hand, methods for using data to estimate the state of tourists and tourist spots using machine learning have emerged, in addition to conventional tourism statistics. As a result of these technological advances, smart tourism, which provides real-time and personal information support to travelers, is emerging. In addition to technologies for tourists, such as automatic route creation and recommendation and estimation of travel conditions, we conduct research from the perspective of what kind of information should be provided to all entities involved in tourism, such as local governments, travel administrators, and even local communities.