Profile based personalized tourist trip recommendation model

Abstract

This study was developed to optimize the personalized tourist trip recommendation model in Phuket, Thailand. Phuket has consistently been a top ranked tourist destination, with 12.5 million tourists generating USD 9.04 million revenue in 2015. In order to develop the personalized tourist model, a socio-demographic study of destination satisfaction was established by administration of a survey on July 14-18, 2016 to 1,221 visitors in the departure hall of Phuket International Airport.The study utilized the survey data by quota sampling from the proportion of the top 4 nationalities visiting Phuket. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed to examine which socio-demographic factors were statistically significant. Finally, this study carried out a three-way ANOVA to obtain the mean satisfaction from the interaction between the 3 most influential variables and each destination. The findings from one-way ANOVA showed (1)Nationality, Education Income, and first time visitor or not were associated with differences in the level of tourist satisfaction, (2)Thai tourist satisfied coastal attractions less than Chinese significantly, (3)there are no different satisfaction among international tourists for coastal destinations but significantly differed for cultural attractions, (4)tourist with no university degree statistically satisfied coastal and cultural destination different from tourist with post graduate degree. The value of mean satisfaction from three-way ANOVA is used in this model to create recommendation trip based on their profile based.The objective function was to maximize tourist satisfaction.The constraints were the number of attraction/trip, spending time/day, and starting time of the day. The model was validated by 15 tourists from Thai, China, Australia, and Finland.The satisfaction rating scores was 4.06 out of 5.The model will be an initial tool to guide tourists in order to plan or make travel decisions prior to the trip. However once the model is further developed, it will be a comprehensive aspect of tourism management to be utilized by tourism decision makers and businesses to comprehensively manage and market to specific tourist segments.