GuideMe – A Tourist Guide with a Recommender System and Social Interaction

In the past few years, with the proliferation of mobile devices people are experiencing frequent communication and information exchange. For instance, in the context of tourist visits, it is often the case that each person carries out a smartphone, to get information about touristic places. When one visits some location, a tourist guide application will recommend useful information, according to its current location, preferences, and past visits. Afterwards, the tourist guide allows for the user to provide feedback about each visit. In this paper, we address the development and the key features of a tourist guide, named GuideMe. Its mobile and Web applications provide consultation, publication, and recommendation of touristic locations. Each user may consult places of touristic interest, receive suggestions of previously unseen touristic places according to other users recommendations, and to perform its own recommendations. The recommendations are carried out using the well-known Mahout library. As compared to previous recommender based tourist guides, the key novelties of GuideMe are its integration with social networks and the unique set of options offered in the application. The usability and load tests performed to evaluate the service, including its recommendation engine, have shown both the adequacy of the designed interfaces as well as good response times.