國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
9
Chapter 2 Literature Review on B2C Mobile Tourism Service
The discussions on the requirement assessment of B2C mobile tourism services based on literature reviews and practical mobile tourism services are presented in section 2.1. The discussions on the system development of B2C mobile tourism services are illustrated in section 2.2.
2.1 Requirement Assessment of B2C Mobile Tourism Service
Among previous research addressing the requirements of mobile tourism services, Proll and Retschitzegger (2000) address this issue by providing real-time tourism information like weather forecasts and snow reports via mobile devices to help tourists in scheduling their tour plans and outdoor activities. According to Cheverst et al. (2000), the mobile tour guide services are useful in providing up-to-date and context-aware tourism information to tourists via handheld devices. Yeo and Huang (2003) report that by gathering and providing accurate, prompt and relevant traffic condition to tourists, the mobile tourism services solve the transportation problems for tourists during the trips. Tsamakos, Giaglis, and Kourouthamassis (2002) indicate a promising application potential to auction and reverse auction of tourism products and services over mobile devices to allow tourists to enjoy personalized services and to empower tourists with active participation in the industry. Research groups of Berger, Lehmann, and Lehner (2003) as well as Hinze and Voisard (2003) point out the potential of location-based information services in the tourism industry. Chiu et al. (2009) propose a multi-agent mobile route advisory system for a multi-modal public transport network. Yu (2005) suggests that tourism related information search and recommendation, transaction and payment, as well as trip tracking and quality control services can be well supported by using mobile devices. Mallat et al. (2006) observe that usefulness and benefits of the mobile ticketing services are perceived differently in different use situations. Axup and Viller (2005), on the other hand, show the user needs for travel gossips on the road from the mobile travel community services. Besides, major functions and benefits of mobile tourism services mentioned in previous studies include allowing tourists to locate friends (Olofsson, Carlsson, and Sjolander, 2006), to access real-time tour information such as road conditions, weather forecasts, events changes, and flight delays for tour control (Berger, Lehmann, and Lehner, 2003; Cheverst et al., 2000; Hinze and Voisard, 2003; Kakaletris et al., 2004; Proll and Retschitzegger, 2000; Yeo and Huang, 2003; Yu, 2005), to hook on the mobile tourism community to ask for the comments of nearby vegetarian restaurants or to share the latest tour news via mobile devices (Aschoff and Novak, 2008; Axup and Viller, 2005; Nielsen, 2004), to use theme-based, multimedia supported, interactive, personalized mobile tour guides to seize indoor and outdoor learning opportunities like museum exhibition guidance or bird watching activities during the trips (Abowd et al., 1997; Alfaro et al., 2004; Cabrera et al., 2005; Chen, Kao, and Sheu, 2003; Cheverst et al., 2000), to get recommendations on restaurants, events, sightseeing spots, hotels, transportation options, direction instructions, souvenirs, and tour plans (Ardissono et al., 2003; Bellotti et al., 2008; Berger, Lehmann, and
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
10
Lehner, 2003; Castillo et al., 2008; Cheverst et al., 2000; Chiu et al., 2009; Nielsen, 2004;
Pousman et al., 2004; Yu, 2005), and to initiate auctions, book, and pay for last-minute trips, train tickets, car rentals, and hotel reservations (Cheverst et al., 2000; Goto and Kambayashi, 2003; Lukkari, Korhonen, and Ojala, 2004; Mallat et al., 2006; Ondrus and Pigneur, 2006;
Ortiz et al., 2001; Tsamakos, Giaglis, and Kourouthanassis, 2002; Yu, 2005).
From literature reviews on B2C mobile tourism services, prior researches acknowledge the significant needs of the B2C mobile tourism services, and they address the requirements of B2C mobile tourism services by proposing specific types of B2C mobile tourism services to solve specific types of B2C mobile tourism issues. However, they do not delve into the dynamics of the whole tour decision-making processes from tourist perspectives and therefore existing literatures are of limited assistance in unraveling the complexities of requirements of the B2C mobile tourism services. This study addresses the above gaps in the B2C mobile tourism service literatures by presenting a simple yet useful B2C mobile tourism service classification framework that can serve as the basis for further exploration of the requirement assessments of the B2C mobile tourism services. Moreover, there is little study on the importance, feasibility, and cost-benefit effectiveness assessment of the B2C mobile tourism services from the business perspectives. Existing B2C mobile tourism services researches lack empirical observations of service providers’ responses to the proposed B2C mobile tourism services with real business operation considerations. Past B2C mobile tourism services do not employ tourist surveys as well as business surveys, wherein tourists and service providers are asked to respond to hypothetical scenarios. Even though survey responses are challenged by not being indicative of final choices, survey results are still important references to observe tourists’ as well as service providers’ assessments of B2C mobile tourism services. In brief, it is significant important to have a multi-facet requirement assessment to identify potential value-added B2C mobile tourism services from both tourists’ and service providers’
perspectives. Since such observations are missing from existing literatures, this study represents a first step in this direction. In summary, it can be easily seen that previous works on B2C mobile tourism services focus mainly on specific service types or issues, the lacks of comprehensive studies regarding the integrated B2C mobile tourism service classification framework, as well as empirical evidence on assessing B2C mobile tourism service requirements are significant.
In addition to the literature reviews on B2C mobile tourism services, practical mobile tourism services provided by the tourism industry, 3G operators, Taiwan government offices, etc. are also presented. Current travel and tourism related websites such as Travelocity, Expedia, and Priceline launch the mobile tourism services to allow travelers to access travel information via mobile devices. For example, travelers can view their current itineraries, book ground transportation and hotels, and receive up-to-the-minute information about flight status.
Moreover, other useful travel tools include access to a currency converter calculator, city guide and destination information, and local weather reports, etc. Priceline also provides highlights of Zagat-rated restaurants and attractions by city. These mobile tourism services meet the information needs, but no personalized recommendation services have been provided in current mobile tourism services offered by e-tourism websites. We also investigate some practical B2C mobile tourism services in Taiwan provided by the government offices (e.g., Central Weather Bureau, Yangmingshan National Park, and Taipei Travel Net), the 3G
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
11
operators (Taiwan Mobile, Chunghwa Telecom, and FETnet), the GPS-based navigation service providers (TOBE, PAPAGO, and TomTom), and the tourism industry (Eva Airways and Lion Travel Service). Available B2C mobile tourism services in Taiwan include weather forecast information for major sightseeing spots, static introduction and direction information for a specific sightseeing spot, predicted bus arrival time for a selected bus number, nearby restaurant information based on tourist current location, mobile payment services like mobile wallets, mobile credit cards, and travel insurance payment, tour route recommendations, map-based and audio-enabled direction instructions, fight re-schedule notification services, and hotel reservation confirmation messages, etc. These service providers offer mobile payment services, location-based information and recommendation services, but no personalized recommendation services have been offered by current B2C mobile tourism services providers in Taiwan.
2.2 System Development for B2C Mobile Tourism Service
Among many research works regarding personalized and/or location-based mobile services, Chen, Zhang, and Zhou (2005) propose an architecture design of an m-service portal.
In their proposed architecture, there are three major components, namely, list manager, profiler, and agency. List manager maintains a personalized list of preconfigured m-services specified by mobile users. Profiler is responsible for storing personal information and preferences such as information needs and message delivery preference. Agency uses intelligent agent technologies to automatically search in the web service/m-service registers to identify appropriate services that satisfy users’ needs. Focusing on web service interoperation, Zhang, Chen, and Zhou (2005) provide a framework for dynamic and personalized composition of web services. Four major components specified in the framework include storages for personal preference settings, web services for inter-business cooperation, business intelligence to satisfy users’ needs, and geographic displays for location-based services. Hand et al. (2006) propose a three-tier location-based development architecture that consists of client communication tier, application-tier, and geographic information system (GIS) tier. The client communication tier is a protocol independent tier, where the users’
location is established and where communication with the application tier occurs. The application tier performs all results-set mark-up into the appropriate output display for the user’s wireless device. The geographic information system tier performs all location-based application query processing.
As for specifically applying to the tourism domain, Kakaletris et al. (2004) address the design and implementation issues for delivering location-based tourism-related content services. Key points that require careful considerations include service features and procedures, content structure, quality-of-service terms, and security. By illustrating an example of generic tourist guide, Scherp and Boll (2004) emphasize on supporting the dynamic generation of personalized multimedia content in respect of the tourist’s interests and preferences, current location and environment, and mobile device used. Aiming at effectively coordinating and integrating disparate information and service resources anytime and anywhere, Chiu et al. (2009) propose a ubiquitous tourist assistance system that is built upon multi-agent and semantic web technologies for providing personalized assistance and automation to the tourists with different preferences and often changing requirements during
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
12
their trips. Five agent clusters specified in the system architecture include tourist assistant, ontology maintenance and search, requirement/preference management, package planning, and local tour planning. Ricci and Nguyen (2007) present a critique-based mobile recommender system that lets users expressing session-specific preferences in addition to the long-term collected preferences. The objective is to provide on-tour system support to mobile travelers for selecting products or services based on the integration of both types of preferences. Driver and Clarke (2008), on the other hand, point out that most research related to mobile, context-aware activity scheduling to date has focused on tourist guide applications.
This type of application provides the user with a static tour on a mobile device, but does not support dynamic and context-based trail management. An application framework comprising trail generation and trail reconfiguration point identification modules is then proposed for managing mobile and context-aware trails.
As can be seen, although there are several previous works addressing the design and implementation issues for delivering personalized and/or location-based tourism services, only partial solutions to the targeted context and location aware personalized tour planning and recommendation services have been provided. For efficiently and effectively integrating personalized and location aware information to support the recommendation and rescheduling of personalized tour plans, the need of an application framework and development method for directing and facilitating the service system design, implementation, and operation processes is still significant, and more in-depth exploration into this topic is required.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
13