Smart guiding: egocentric way-finding information for attracting and guiding tourists

Using mobile, wirelessly connected electronic devices in tourism settings is an active research area in academia and industry. Electronic "information clouds" can be used to enhance the experience of how tourists explore and experience cities. It is reasonable to expect that in the near future, most tourists will carry some sort of mobile device, such as a mobile phone or a personal digital assistant (PDA), enabling them to access and browse information clouds offered in areas of interest to tourists. In this paper, we describe ongoing research into providing way-finding knowledge in such a way it can be used to attract and guide prospective customers to sites of\ud interest. Distinct characteristics of this research are the foci on the user's own perspective and on ways to broker way-finding knowledge within the user's community of interest such that the knowledge becomes a community-authored resource. This means tourists are encouraged to share their domain knowledge and "best practices", such as descriptions of routes they found particularly pleasant. Tourists may then choose descriptions fiom these resources as well as from route descriptions provided by participating tourism institutions