Empirical Evidence of Contribution to E-Tourism by Application of Personalized Tourism Recommendation System

Abstract

This article examines the necessity of applying recommendations by introducing web portal in the line of enriching e-tourism. It argues the dramatically change of tourist motives and interests due to the rapid usage of Internet. In order to cope with ever-changing tourist preferences and to contribute to tourism and economic development, a tourism recommendation system is proposed. Hence, a software module is developed based on collaborative filtering method which accuracy testing performed satisfactory outcomes. Moreover, acting as a national tourism web portal it enables to be introduced as a tool for assisting tourists in identification of a tailor-made tourist place. So, the study indicates a solution for generating personalized list of interesting tourism items by matching them to the tourists’ preferences. In this line, “MyTravelPal” is strongly recommended as a way-out in increasing the awareness for certain tourist destination that is capable of fulfilling travelers’ favorites.