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Personalised Tourist Services Using Geographic Information Systems via Internet

Objetivo

TourServ will enhance competitiveness of all players in alpine tourism by integrated multimedia-information on accommodation, travelling, weather, cultural arrangements allowing booking and payment, tour guidance including rescue consulting. This services will be personalised if appropriate, e.g. for preparation and adjustment of rented sports equipment to the consumers' body physiques. Three-dimensional maps of mountaineering / skiing / hiking regions will be made available via the Internet. When accessing by mobile platforms, e.g. personnel digital assistants (PDA), the tourist will see maps selected according to his position gained by GPS, containing information about the holiday area, e.g. the co-ordinates of lifts and according information, latest route information like the condition of ski runs and hiking tours, e.g. about danger of avalanches, and other rescue information services.

Objectives:
The objectives are to enhance competitiveness of players in alpine tourism by integrated multimedia-information via Internet on accommodation, travelling, weather, cultural arrangements allowing booking and payment, tour guidance including rescue consulting; to increase the customer base of tourism service providers; to reach advantages in the competitive markets between holiday regions courting young persons open for new technology; to focus tourist information and services for travelling, accommodation, sports by use of Internet access points in hotels, in public places, from home, or from mobile platforms; to support the tourists during their sporting activities supplying 3D-Maps and video conferencing with information about rest points, transportation and rescue; to improve planning possibilities for accommodation, rental, and other services increasing preparation time available leading to increased customer satisfaction.

Work description:
The proposed system will be a portal for tourist service providers and public organisations of geo-graphic regions. It will derive the information necessary for this and for tourist guidance using 3D-maps in a data repository. The mobile and stationary tourist access points benefit from the User Interface Plug-In. Geographic information is managed by the TourServ 3D-interface. The tourist service providers interact with consumers by the Tourist Information Presentation. The Help Desk service advises by means of CSCW technology. The Booking / Order processing module interfaces in-house order processing systems of the service providers. The Security / Payment module supports IOTP standards and existing electronic payment methods. The workplan has seven main phases. Phase I analyses the requirements of users in depth. A parallel phase establishes benchmarking via a roundtable, identifying best practice processes. Best practice and interoperability adoption measures and actions will be performed. Phase II about the data structure and software module concept is concerned with the software function, software tools, and data repository specification. The implementation of results will be done by well-tried rapid prototyping methods in phase III. The Pilot Integration phase will result in a demonstrator. A demonstration by service providers and tourists will be done to allow for the next phase. Evaluation. Characteristics of the result will be checked to give hints for further tuning needs. Dissemination and Exploitation, phase VI takes centres on awareness of European tourism service providers and tourists. It is stimulated by WWW presentations, industrial and scientific publication as well as by dissemination and cross fertilisation workshops and TV reports. A post-project exploitation phase will be initiated. In phase 7 Project Management administrative, exploitation and project technical management will take place.

Milestones:
The project will result in a toolkit for Internet presentation and interaction of co-operating partners and customers in a holiday region. Project progress will be measured against the following milestones: benchmarking roundtables; requirements workshop; system architecture workshop, cross fertilisation workshop; software demonstration workshop; user training workshop; co-operative system demonstration action; and the TourServ industrial final workshop with round table discussion.
The project has resulted in a toolkit satisfying the needs for Internet presentation and interaction of all partners and consumers co-operating in one holiday region. The system developed by TourServ is composed of several modules. The main components are user entries for business partners and tourists partly based in user plug-ins, server software modules, and the interface to a distributed data repository establishing the link to central tourist information, and to the reservation systems of the different business partners, and to other services. The plug-in based business to customer tourist entry is the main module for online interaction with the customer. It takes the order of the customer over a secure connection via the Internet. An acknowledgement with complete details of the order will be returned automatically to the customer. In addition a receipt with detailed information about the possibility to trace the status of the booking will be provided.

All presentation on the screen of the customer's computer can be realised with the newest multi media technologies. Virtual reality (VRML) is used to show e.g. hotel rooms. 3D geographic information system technology is used to animate the maps of the region and to access the underlying information from stationary and mobile platforms. In case of unanswered questions or in case of emergency the customer can call the tourist information centre or the rescue service by use of the Help Desk Entry via the Internet. Technologies used are internet telephony with screen sharing and the possibility of video conferencing. The system is operating towards two main databases. One of the databases is filled with geographic information and objects of interest (geo-positions of ski lodges, rental stations, hotels, and restaurants in conjunction with their opening hours, co-ordinates of lifts and according information, local weather information) within the ski region.

The objects of interest contain Internet links to existing WWW information as far as possible. This database will be used mainly for tourist information via the Tourist WWW Plug-In.A second database, the booking and payment transactions database contains the free resources (e.g. hotel rooms or cultural arrangements, types of ski or ski shoes) available at the partner organisations. Information about guests (e.g. accommodation preferences, sporting and cultural interests) is stored. This allows to pre-select offers presented, and to prepare and adjust sports equipment beforehand to the needs of the customer by using the system for renting. The information necessary to perform the booking procedure itself is contained in the booking and payment transactions database. The data interchange connectors interface the existing booking systems available at the sites of the partner organisations to this central database of the ski region built up on the results of European database initiatives. This information can be updated on-line using the appropriate standards for the exchange secure payment data (e.g. to legacy systems), and order management data.

Ámbito científico

Programa(s)

Tema(s)

Convocatoria de propuestas

Data not available

Régimen de financiación

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinador

MEGATEL INFORMATIONS- UND KOMMUNIKATIONSSYSTEME GMBH
Aportación de la UE
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Dirección
UNIVERSITAETSALLEE 18 HS 2
28359 BREMEN
Alemania

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Coste total
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Última actualización: 13 Junio 2005

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/IST-1999-20414/es

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