Intelligent Interfaces for the Tourist

Artificial intelligence techniques can provide support in many areas relevant for tourism: e.g. support for the tourism resources decision maker, support for automatic negotiation or transaction management and so on [Werthner and Klein, 1999]. In this paper we shall concentrate on interfaces for the tourist. Intelligent interfaces may open new scenarios for tourism and for helping in the fruition of real (not only virtual) cultural sites. The main prospect made possible by the adoption of these technologies is to move from the current mass-oriented approach to an approach oriented toward the individual. This has at least two facets: on the one side systems will have to take into account the specificity of the user with his own interests, idiosyncracies, and so on - and accordingly take action; on the other side the user will be the main agent in his exploration, he will take the initiative and exploit the high level of interactivity that will be available in intelligent interfaces