Destination advertising in a smarter way: A machine learning model for DMOs’ photo selection

Photos are important carriers for destination image communication. Currently, effectively and efficiently selecting appropriate photos for destination promotion remains a major challenge for DMOs, and has caused the discrepancy between projected and received images. In the process of photo selection, contents that can best evoke viewers’ potential motives should be highly considered. This project proposes and implements a machine learning based model to assist DMOs with photo content selection. This protocol can rank candidate photos describing a specific theme from viewers’ perspective. In our study, over 190,000 Flickr photos of New York City were analyzed to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. The results indicate that the proposed method can facilitate the selection of destination photos and address the well-known gap between the projected image and the received image

Scraping social media photos posted in Kenya and elsewhere to detect and analyze food types

Monitoring population-level changes in diet could be useful for education and for implementing interventions to improve health. Research has shown that data from social media sources can be used for monitoring dietary behavior. We propose a scrape-by-location methodology to create food image datasets from Instagram posts. We used it to collect 3.56 million images over a period of 20 days in March 2019. We also propose a scrape-by-keywords methodology and used it to scrape ∼30,000 images and their captions of 38 Kenyan food types. We publish two datasets of 104,000 and 8,174 image/caption pairs, respectively. With the first dataset, Kenya104K, we train a Kenyan Food Classifier, called KenyanFC, to distinguish Kenyan food from non-food images posted in Kenya. We used the second dataset, KenyanFood13, to train a classifier KenyanFTR, short for Kenyan Food Type Recognizer, to recognize 13 popular food types in Kenya. The KenyanFTR is a multimodal deep neural network that can identify 13 types of Kenyan foods using both images and their corresponding captions. Experiments show that the average top-1 accuracy of KenyanFC is 99% over 10,400 tested Instagram images and of KenyanFTR is 81% over 8,174 tested data points. Ablation studies show that three of the 13 food types are particularly difficult to categorize based on image content only and that adding analysis of captions to the image analysis yields a classifier that is 9 percent points more accurate than a classifier that relies only on images. Our food trend analysis revealed that cakes and roasted meats were the most popular foods in photographs on Instagram in Kenya in March 2019.Accepted manuscrip

Підвищення лідируючих позицій туристичної агенції за рахунок оптимізації її веб-сайту

Purpose – to study website’s work and content of the travel agency on the example of the "Laspi" travel agency, identify its technical properties and offer methods to increase the web-resource leading position in the Yandex and Google search engines by performing SEO-analysis. Design/Method/Research approach. Internet resources SEO-analysis. Findings.The travel product promotion directly depends on the travel market participants' advertising tools' effectiveness, mainly travel agents. It is determined that one of the new technologies that increase the advertising effectiveness, in particular via the travel agencies’ web resources, is SEO-technology. The authors Identified technical shortcomings of its operation, mainly related to search queries statistics, the subject site visits, the semantic core operation, the site improvement, the site increasing citation, and the number of persistent references in the network. It is proved that updating site development, changing its environment, analyzing user behavior, namely the Og Properties micro markup, updating HTML tags, analytical programs placing, iframe objects selection, and other activities, increase the content uniqueness. As a result, search engines scanned the site, and the search results took first place for the positions essential for the web resource. Originality/Value. The leading positions increasing mechanism application, website operation optimization allow search engines to bring it to the TOP of the most popular travel sites. Theoretical implications. To optimize the web resource operation, a mechanism for improving its leading position is proposed that includes three steps: the general website characteristics of marketing, SEO-analysis, recommendations provision. Practical implications. The research is practical in improving the site’s technical operation and increasing its leading position in Yandex and Google search engines. Research limitations/Future research. Further research aims at the site further analysis after making the proposed changes to its operation. Paper type – empirical.  Мета роботи – дослідити роботу й наповненість інформацією веб-сайту туристичної агенції на прикладі туристичної агенції «Ласпі», виявити його технічні властивості та запропонувати методи підвищення лідируючих позицій web-ресурсу в пошуковій видачі Яндекс і Гугл шляхом здійснення SEO-аналізу. Дизайн/Метод/План дослідження. Застосовано SEO-аналіз інтернет-ресурсів. Результати дослідження. Просунення туристичних продуктів безпосередньо залежить від ефективності застосовуваних рекламних засобів гравцями туристичного ринку, зокрема, туристичними агентами. Визначено, що однією з нових технологій, що підвищує ефективність реклами, зокрема через веб-ресурси туристичних агенцій, є SEO-технологія (технологія пошукової оптимізації). На прикладі учасника туристичного ринку в роботі досліджено веб-ресурси туристичної агенції «Ласпі» та проведено SEO-аналіз її сайту. Виявлено технічні недоліки його функціонування, зокрема, пов'язані із статистикою пошукових запитів, відвідуванням сайту в тематиці, з роботою семантичного ядра, з поліпшенням самого сайту, зі збільшенням цитування сайту і кількості його згадувань в мережі та інші. Доведено, що проведення робіт з розвитку сайту, зміни його оточення, аналізу поведінки користувачів, а саме використання мікророзмітки Og Properties, оновлення HTML тегів, розміщення аналітичних програм, виділення об’єктів iframe та інших заходів призведуть до збільшення унікальності контенту. В результаті сайт швидко скануватиметься пошуковими роботами і потраплятиме в пошукову видачу на перші місця за тими позиціями, які важливі саме для веб-ресурсу.  Теоретичне значення дослідження. З метою оптимізації роботи веб-ресурсу запропоновано механізм підвищення його лідируючих позицій, який складається із трьох кроків: загальна характеристика веб-сайту з позицій маркетингу, проведення SEO-аналізу, надання рекомендацій. Практичне значення дослідження. Проведені дослідження представляють практичну цінність з покращення технічного функціонування сайту та підвищення його лідируючих позицій в пошукових системах Яндекс і Гугл. Оригінальність/Цінність/Наукова новизна дослідження. Застосування механізму підвищення лідируючих позицій, оптимізуючи роботу веб-сайту, дасть можливість пошуковим роботам вивести ресурс в ТОП найпопулярніших серед сайтів турагенств. Обмеження дослідження/Перспективи подальших досліджень. Майбутні дослідження спрямовані на подальший аналіз сайту після внесення запропонованих змін у його роботу. Тип статті – емпіричний

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Intelligent Tourist Routes

A maior parte das pessoas gosta de viajar e o Porto foi eleita a cidade da Europa mais interessante para visitar em 2019. Com grande potencial de atratividade, o Porto conta com infindáveis opções de rotas turísticas. Investigações recentes mostram que um operador eficiente de viagens não só deve ter em conta as necessidades e constrangimentos do utilizador, mas também permitir algum grau de livre exploração da cidade, adaptando a oferta de acordo com as preferências do utilizador. A imagem global do contexto é um bom ponto de partida para uma viagem memorável. Nesta dissertação pretende-se desenvolver sistema inteligente capaz de maximizar a satisfação do visitante, criando percursos dinâmicos e personalizados em função de preferências e interesses dos utilizadores. Estes serão aferidos diretamente através de técnicas modernas de segmentação e descoberta de perfil e indiretamente através da pontuação atribuída pelos utilizadores a sets de fotografias (normais e 360) dos locais de interesse. Ao longo do percurso o utilizador poderá dar feedback sobre os locais de interesse sugeridos por forma a potenciar a aprendizagem do sistema

Desirable UX for Promoting Prachinburi Cultural and Local Wisdom Tourism of Thai Tourists

The objectives of this research were to study Thai tourists’ experiences and behaviors in making a trip to visit cultural and local wisdom destinations in Prachinburi; to understand user journeys of Thai tourists in making a trip to visit cultural and local wisdom destinations in Prachinburi; and to identify the target users and propose desirable user experience for website development for promoting Prachinburi cultural and local wisdom tourism based on the users’ perspectives. An online questionnaire survey was conducted using SurveyMonkey platform to distribute and gather data. Data were obtained from 400 Thais whohad had plan to visit Prachinburi cultural and local wisdom destinations within the next 1-2 years. Data were processed, edited, and analyzed using descriptive statistics and crosstabulation analysis.The findings showed that Thai tourists were tosearch and share travel information through website via their iOS or Android mobile devices. Results also indicated that the website was the great channel to retrieve the information, however, the design to support multiple types of devices i.e., responsive web design was recommended. In conclusion,user experience desired by the target users should be inclusive of all seven elements of the user experience honeycomb: useful, desirable, accessible, credible, findable, usable, and valuable

Blitar’s indigenous knowledge promotion through local content collections at Blitar Public Library

The public library is one of the institutions that have the function and task of preserving indigenous knowledge. Recorded in the form of collections stored in the library's local content service consist of printed books, e-books, and audio-visual collections use social media, especially Instagram, can facilitate the dissemination of indigenous knowledge information to local content collections in public libraries. This study aimed to produce media to promote Blitar's indigenous knowledge in the form of infographics with information sourced from the local content collection at the Blitar Public Library. Research method used development method and the Four-D development model with product development stages consisting of defining, designing, developing, and distributing. Respondents in this study were the people of Blitar, media promotion experts, material experts, and expert practitioners (librarians). In this study, product trials were carried out on three aspects consist of material, visual, and language. Based on the trials and validity tests results, it concludes that Blitar's local content promotion media products in the form of infographics are suitable for use with revisions. Blitar local wisdom infographics increase the reach by maximizing the use of hashtags and scheduling infographic uploads at the best times. Local content promotion media products in infographics form produced in this development research are quite good.  However, there needs to be some improvement especially on material aspect.  The material that was carried did not represent all local wisdom topics in Blitar

Study on Situation-oriented Classification of Sightseeing Images Based on Visual and Metadata Features

This thesis proposes a method for classifying sightseeing images into different situations based on their visual and metadata features. The widespread use of digital cameras and smart phones has brought about a situation where tourists take lots of photos of memorable moments during their travels and upload these photos to web albums such as Flickr or Picasa. These sightseeing images then become useful resources for others who plan to visit the places shown in the images. As scenes of sightseeing spots vary from situation to situation, the impression one gets from viewing these images depends heavily on conditions such as the weather and season. If a web-based tourist service could provide tourists with different views of sightseeing spots in various situations, visitors would be able to plan their vacations by looking at the views they enjoy. That is, such a service would be useful for tourists to plan when and where to visit. To achieve this goal, a method that can classify various sightseeing images into various situations is required. Although image classification / annotation using visual and text features is becoming a major research topic in various fields, such as information retrieval and web intelligence, image classification methods focusing on various situations have not been studied yet. One of the contributions of this thesis is to consider various situations and organize them in terms of their characteristics. The situations treated in this thesis are classified into weather-related, time-related, and season-related ones. Weather-related situations include sunshiny and cloudy situations, and color features of sky regions are expected to be effective as a means of classifying them. On the other hand, time-related situations are characterized as certain times of the day such as sunrise/sunset, daytime, and night-time. Therefore, shooting date and time, i.e., metadata attached to the photos, are important features for such a classification. Different from weather-related and time-related situations, scenery change by season will depend on the characteristics of a sightseeing spot. It may happen that even though two sightseeing spots are geographically close, one maybe season-dependent and the other not. Therefore, sightseeing spots should also be classified into season-dependent and season-independent as a preprocessing for image classification. This thesis proposes different classification methods for each of these situation types. The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 describes the background and motivation. The vast amount of sightseeing images available in the web albums is an important resource for tourists. The purpose of this thesis is to establish an efficient image classification method targeting sightseeing images showing various situations, which will add extra value to existing web-based tourist services. The related topics of the thesis, i.e., image classification / annotation, have attracted a lot of research, and various features and integration methods have been studied. However, the major focus of these studies has been general-purpose processing; methods focusing on various situations have not been studied yet. This chapter defines and organizes the situations to be handled in the thesis and discusses the challenges of classifying sightseeing images into each situation. Chapter 2 describes the existing applications of tourism informatics. Image classification and annotation methods based on supervised and unsupervised learning with various features are also covered as related work. Chapter 3 describes content-based image classification targeting weather-related and time-related situations. Visual features for identifying each target situation are considered from viewpoints such as composition of the photos and typical colors in each situation. The images are classified in a hierarchical manner, in each stage of which efficient color features, region of interests (ROI), and cluster identification method are determined. Experimental results show that the proposed method can obtain clusters for each situation with high precision and recall. Chapter 4 focuses on time-related situations and extends the content-based image classification method proposed in Chapter 3 by introducing filtering based on tag information. By using timestamps attached to images, clusters for the situations obtained by the content-based approach are verified to increase the accuracy of the classification. The time windows are adjusted by considering the geolocation of sightseeing spots, and this adjustment is based on information obtained from the Web. Experimental results show that this method can improve precision while maintaining recall in most cases. Chapter 5 focuses on season-related situations and proposes a method for classifying sightseeing spots into season-dependent and season-independent ones as preprocessing for image classification. If image processing is required in order to extract features from photos, the network load for downloading photos and the cost of image processing become a serious problem. To solve this problem, the statistical features of sightseeing spots calculated using metadata are proposed. Image processing is only applied to the spots classified as season-dependent by machine learning with the statistical features. Experimental results show that this method can classify actual sightseeing spots with high precision and recall. Chapter 6 summarizes the conclusions presented in Chapter 3 to Chapter 5. This thesis proposes three kinds of image classification methods, each of which employs efficient visual and metadata features and integration methods for the target situations. The results of this thesis are meant to contribute to tourism and related applications, which are important issues in many cities including Tokyo. As the volume of images and metadata available on the Web is still increasing at a rapid rate, the contributions of the thesis may have numerous other applications.首都大学東京, 2013-09-30, 博士(工学), 甲第437号首都大学東