All roads lead to the places of your interest: An on-demand, ride-sharing visitor transport service

Successful visitor transport within large tourist sites should balance visitor experience and operating costs. Inspired by the model of sharing economy, we design a “user-centered” intelligent visitor transport system to improve the efficiency and quality of experience of transport service in large tourist sites. The system’s core approach is a three-stage heuristic model based on Pareto optimality. Results of the proposed service indicate a drastic reduction of visitor delay time and an improvement in energy efficiency. The proposed scheduling schemes for organizers are more diversified and adaptable than the existing service

Tampa Bay Region Mass Transportation: Phase II

Tampa Bay Region, Florida Tampa Bay region mass transportation: Phase II. Prepared for the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, by Harvey N. Kreisberg. McLean, Va : TRW Systems Group, 1971. With appendixes document

Geo Data Science for Tourism

This reprint describes the recent challenges in tourism seen from the point of view of data science. Thanks to the use of the most popular Data Science concepts, you can easily recognise trends and patterns in tourism, detect the impact of tourism on the environment, and predict future trends in tourism. This reprint starts by describing how to analyse data related to the past, then it moves on to detecting behaviours in the present, and, finally, it describes some techniques to predict future trends. By the end of the reprint, you will be able to use data science to help tourism businesses make better use of data and improve their decision making and operations.

Sustainable Business Models in Tourism

We invite you to read the Special Issue on business models in tourism, in the context of considering the principles of sustainable development. It is a collection of 14 articles published in a Special Issue of Sustainability MDPI in 2019–2021. The dynamic changes taking place in the world economy, social life, and the natural environment force entrepreneurs to change their business models. This also happens in the tourism business. The SARS-COV2 virus pandemic has increased the need for change. It is necessary to offer managers modern management tools that cover the broadest possible scope of integration of the elements of the conducted business activities, at the same time adjusted to the specificity of the market and needs of the natural environment in which the enterprises managed by them operate. This book, formulated in the light of the presented needs, aims to use the concept of business models and sustainability business models in the context of a tourism enterprise adapted to the existing conditions of tourist and spa activities

Percepce atraktivity Polska jako turistického prostoru pro obyvatele Česka

The doctoral thesis is devoted to analyzing the perception of attractiveness of Poland as a tourism space from the perspective of Czech citizens in a broader context of mutual Czech -Polish relations in tourism. The thesis is primarily based on theoretical concepts of geography of tourism and at the same time it also follows other geographical and scientific disciplines. The methodological framework of the thesis benefits from the openness and multi-disciplinary nature of tourism. Part of the thesis was created using traditional methods and techniques applied in geography, among others: questionnaire research among students, structured interviews with employees of travel agencies, semi-structured interviews with representatives of the Polish governmental institutions, and analyses of the Internet and printed sources. Additionally, there were utilized methods and techniques used more frequently in other disciplines, including: Delphi method, SWOT analysis, mystery shopping, analysis of travelogues, Internet sources of information about Poland, and content of textbooks. The empirical part of the thesis serves to realize four main aims. The most important aim of thesis can be considered the identification and evaluation of opinions of selected groups of Czechs on the attractiveness of Poland as a...Disertační práce je věnována analýze percepce atraktivity Polska jako turistického prostoru z pohledu obyvatel České republiky v širším kontextu vzájemných česko - polských vztahů v oblasti cestovního ruchu. Vychází z teoretických konceptů geografie cestovního ruchu a současně dále navazuje na jiná geografická odvětví (např. behaviorální geografii) a vědecké disciplíny (např. marketing anebo sociologii). Metodologický rámec práce těží z otevřenosti a multidisciplinární povahy cestovního ruchu, důraz je kladen na využití synergií vyplývajících z vzájemného doplňování různých pohledů na vědecký výzkum. Část práce vznikla s využitím metod a technik tradičně využívaných v geografii. Byl proveden: anketový výzkum mezi žáky základných škol, strukturované rozhovory se zaměstnanci cestovních kanceláří, semi-strukturované rozhovory s představiteli polských vládních institucí a také analýza internetových a tištěných zdrojů. Dodatečně byly použité metody a techniky častěji využívané v jiných disciplínách, mezi jinými: delfská metoda, analýza SWOT, mystery shopping, analýza internetových cestopisů a internetových zdrojů informací o Polsku a také analýza obsahu učebnic. Empirická část práce posloužila k realizaci čtyř základních cílů. Za hlavní z nich lze považovat identifikaci a zhodnocení názorů zvolených...Department of Social Geography and Regional Develop.Katedra sociální geografie a region. rozvojeFaculty of SciencePřírodovědecká fakult

Mobility in the Floating City: A Study of Pedestrian Transportation

This Interdisciplinary Qualifying Project worked to study and improve the mobility efficiency of the historic city center of Venice. We evaluated and quantified pedestrian traffic at 10 high volume bridges and 5 boat stops within the highly touristed and popular district of San Marco. A dynamic computer model visualizing pedestrian movement through San Marco was developed in collaboration with the RedFish Group to help understand the resultant effects of urban changes to ultimately increase mobility efficiency. Traffic through this model was validated by the field counts of pedestrian traffic. Concurrently, we developed a smart-phone navigation application to help pedestrians navigate the city using the public transit system

Switzerland Feasibility Analysis

This feasibility analysis was prepared for Dr. Karen Oates, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, to present the paradigm for Zurich, Switzerland as a project center. Following university requirements for existing project centers and the vision of faculty, we delineated the components for a sustainable, compelling project center. After assessing all relevant information from an on-site investigation, we concluded that the necessary environment exists in Switzerland and recommended a model for the establishment of the center

Marketing the downtown of Coimbra: the APBC case

For the current project I have chosen to develop research around the marketing strategy for the ‘Agency for the Promotion of the Downtown of Coimbra’ ou ‘Downtown Coimbra Promotion Agency’ (Agência de Promoção da Baixa de Coimbra - APBC). And so, this project aims to provide lines for the marketing strategy which will help APBC to develop their brand image and to grow and expand their notoriety. For this purpose, this project analyses and studies seven portuguese cities using the benchmarking methodology. Having developed this analysis, then the intended output is to enhance and develop the touristic potentialities of APBC and lift further developments according to the official directives. Also, this analysis can provide future direction for the development of a marketing plan for APBC

An intelligent destination recommendation system for tourists.

Choosing a tourist destination from the information available is one of the most complex tasks for tourists when making travel plans, both before and during their travel. With the development of a recommendation system, tourists can select, compare and make decisions almost instantly. This involves the construction of decision models, the ability to predict user preferences, and interpretation of the results. This research aims to develop a Destination Recommendation System (DRS) focusing on the study of machine-learning techniques to improve both technical and practical aspects in DRS. First, to design an effective DRS, an intensive literature review was carried out on published studies of recommendation systems in the tourism domain. Second, the thesis proposes a model-based DRS, involving a two-step filtering feature selection method to remove irrelevant and redundant features and a Decision Tree (DT) classifier to offer interpretability, transparency and efficiency to tourists when they make decisions. To support high scalability, the system is evaluated with a huge body of real-world data collected from a case-study city. Destination choice models were developed and evaluated. Experimental results show that our proposed model-based DRS achieves good performance and can provide personalised recommendations with regard to tourist destinations that are satisfactory to intended users of the system. Third, the thesis proposes an ensemble-based DRS using weight hybrid and cascade hybrid. Three classification algorithms, DT, Support Vector Machines (SVMs) and Multi- Layer Perceptrons (MLPs), were investigated. Experimental results show that the bagging ensemble of MLP classifiers achieved promising results, outperforming baseline learners and other combiners. Lastly, the thesis also proposes an Adaptive, Responsive, Interactive Model-based User Interface (ARIM-UI) for DRS that allows tourists to interact with the recommended results easily. The proposed interface provides adaptive, informative and responsive information to tourists and improves the level of the user experience of the proposed system