A

conceptual framework for personalized location-based

Services (LBS) tourism mobile application
leveraging semantic web to enhance tourism experience
Fadhlun Mohamed Mahmood
Zailan Arabee Bin Abdul Salam
School of Postgraduate studies
School of Postgraduate studies
Asia Pacific University (A.P.U)
Asia Pacific University (A.P.U)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Siham.mohamed@hotmail.com
zailan@apu.edu.my
Abstract Mobile location-based tourism applications relevant to the user preference and
contextual parameters such provide guidance to the tourist on the move based on their
as time and location provides an added value which would
preferences and context such as time and location. These
enhance the user experience.
applications depend heavily on the GPS which is used to
determine the user location so as to deliver information that takes into account user preferences
and context. However, the delivery
Semantic web technologies will facilitate the development of
of information that is relevant to the user in terms of their
more intelligent location-based services that would provide
preferences and their contextual condition seem to be lacking in
information that is relevant based on the user context and,

most of the applications. Semantic web technologies provide an

even provide search queries that are more accurate [16].
opportunity to develop more intelligent location-based
applications that would enable the delivery of information that is The research context will focus
on providing personalized
more accurate and relevant to the user. Thus, the objectives are;
recommendations to tourists who are in their respective
1) to identify the benefits of leveraging semantic web technologies destination by harnessing
mobile location-based and semantic
on the framework 2) to identify the techniques used to provide
personalized activities recommendations based on the user
web technologies. Having identified the area of the study it
preferences.3) to identify the methods used to build user profile
enable the researchers to focus on the applicability of the
that contains user preferences.4) to identify the key locationframework in tourism industry and its contribution to the
based component that needs to be integrated in the framework. A
overall tourist experience and satisfaction.
conceptual framework for personalized mobile location-based
tourism apps leveraging semantic web to enhance tourism
The aim of this paper is to present a generic conceptual
experience is proposed.
framework for personalized mobile location-based service
(LBS) tourism apps leveraging semantic web technologies to
Keywords-component: Mobile location-based tourism,
enhance tourism experience.

GPS, semantic web, personalization

Section 2 provide an overview of the framework and,
I.
INTRODUCTION
highlights the benefit of using semantic web technologies in
location-based service. Section 3 presents the details of the
Location-based mobile applications are applications that
methods used to design the framework. Section 4 represent the
leverage GPS technology embedded in devices such as
conceptual framework scenario and, describe the activity
Smartphone to determine the user current location. Such
recommendation filtering techniques used to provide
applications provide users with information such as friends
personalized recommendations that takes into account user
nearby and point of interests [8],[35],[24] among these
preferences and context.
applications are applications that fall under tourism domain.
II.
SEMANTICS IN MOBILE TOURISM LOCATION[33] states that location-based tourism applications provide
BASED SERVICES (LBS)
users with better tour experience since they will be able to
A. Overview of the framework
access information anytime and anywhere. However, the
accessibility of information at anywhere and anytime depends

The framework functionalities are conceptualized as

follows;
on the purpose of the application e.g. if the application will be
used prior to visiting the destination; in a sense the application
Presentation of information through the usage of mash-up
is only used for planning a trip or used when the tourist is at
information incorporated such as images for the locations, map
the destination. For the purpose of the research this framework
to indicate nearby attractions.
is intended for tourists who are in their respective destination.
Personalization of information considers the user
In order to better improve the interactivity and further
preferences (user profile), current user context such as time and
enhancement of the framework, providing filtered information
978-1-4673-4529-3/12/$31.00 c
2012 IEEE
287

location. Whereby, the user profile is developed through

and interlinked those data with other data sets from
explicit and implicit method.

GeoNames, YAGO and filckr wrappr to mention a few.

For activity recommendations the framework considers a
III. DESCRIPTION OF THE METHODS USED
hybrid filtering techniques. These techniques include contextdependent content-filtering and context-dependent item-based
There are numerous methods considered to develop the
collaborative filtering. Context-dependent content-filtering framework. In this section we describe the
methods considered.
harnesses semantic analysis to filter items that match the user
A. Location-based services (LBS)
profile. Context-dependent item-based collaborative filtering
Location-based services (LBS) refer to the delivery of data
considers similar items rated by other users to provide
information tailored to the location and context of the mobile
recommendations.
user [9]. Location-based services harnesses geographic
Semantic based tourism knowledge-base is used to
information systems (GIS), internet, communication and
represent the tourism domain. Thus, the recommendation
multimedia technology in a mobile environment to deliver
filtering techniques will use items available in the tourism
value added services to the user [22]. [13], [9] identify
knowledge-base to provide recommendations that takes into
geographic information systems (GIS) as the heart of locationaccount user preferences and contextual parameters such as
based services. According to [34] GIS is the main tool for

time and location

geographical information process, analysis, application and
visualization since GIS is provide geographic information
B. Benefits of adopting semantic web technologies in
services to the LBS. For the purpose of this study GIS system
location-based services (LBS)
is integrated within the framework.
Semantic web is an extension of the current web in which
information is given a well-defined meaning, better enabling
B. Semantic web technologies
computers and people to work in cooperation [17]. The main
Ontology is defined as a data model that represents
objective of semantic web is to transform the current web into
knowledge that can be facts, things and ideas as a set
a web of data [11]. Whereby data from multiple sources can
of concepts within a particular domain and the
be merged and mapped in order to allow interoperability
relationship between these concepts [10], [26], [18].
among different applications. This can only be achieved by
QALL-ME tourism knowledge domain is adopted to
adding meaning on the web resources that would enable the
represent tourism domain for the framework.
machine to automatically infer relationships among different
Linked open data refers to a project that intends to
related concepts. Hence, enabling machines to understand the

bootstrap the web of data by publishing existing data

underlying meaning of different data and inferring the
sets in RDF thus, creating a number of links between
relationship among them enables the retrieval of meaningful
them [14]. Data sources for the adopted ontology are
and accurate results [6].
from DBpedia which contains data sets referring to
locations, GeoNames contains data sets that refer to
The benefits of semantic technologies in LBS are vivid such
geolocations, YAGO contains data set that refers to
as through the application of ontologies and linked open data.
museums and monuments and, flickr wrappr contains
data sets regarding images that can be associated with
The application of ontologies in areas such as tourism
the locations [5].
provides the means of automatically inferring relationships
Knowledge-base comes into existence when instances
among different related concepts in a particular knowledgeare being populated within the ontology [18]. Thus, for
domain. Accordingly ontologies provide location-based
the purpose of the framework tourism knowledgeservices applications with the capability of determining the
based is considered. The tourism knowledge-base is
user s current context as well as his needs [28].
formed using QALL-ME ontology with data sets from

linked open data.

Linked open data initiative refers to a project that intends to
C. Personalization
bootstrap the web of data by publishing existing data sets
using Resource description framework (RDF) thus, creating a
Personalization is the process of providing or
number of links between them [14]. The process will involve
recommending products or services to the individual based on
publishing free open license data sets as RDF on the web and
their personal preferences [31], [32]. The user profile contains
inserting data links among data items from different sources of
information about the customer behavior, demographic and
preferences [2], [31] .In order to accommodate different
data [7]. RDF is a semantic language that was developed to
tourists preferences and maintaining an updated user profile a
form a common way to describe information so it can be read
hybrid user profiling is considered.
and understood by machines [27].
The hybrid user profile comprises of explicit and implicit
Among the data sources published on the linked open data are
user profiling [12]. Explicit is gathered from the user input to
GeoNames, DBpedia, US census data, YAGO and flickr to
the system, where they might be presented with simple
mention a few [7]. For example in [5] the developers used data
questions such as their interest, demographic data and duration

sets about locations from linked open data such as DBpedia

of the trip [4], [30]. Implicit information is gathered from the
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2013 3rd IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC)

user previous behavior or interactivity with the system such as

appreciations based on their ratings for particular items
feedbacks and ratings[ 25],[19].
[15]. Item-based provides recommendations based on
item rates, this approach does not group users rather it

Therefore, the framework has considered the usage of

takes item-to-item ratings [3], [23].
hybrid user profile. Explicit user profile is gathered through a
simple survey questions that requires the users to state their
However, item-based collaborative filtering provides
preferences explicitly. Implicit user profile is gathered through
better quality results and, has better performance than
the user ratings of touristic attractions.
user-based [6].
D. Recommender filtering techniques
Hybrid filtering combines more than one filtering
Context-dependent recommendations [29] defines
technique [29]. Most of hybrid filtering combines
context as any information that is used to characterize
content and collaborative filtering. The purpose of
the situation of an entity whereby, an entity can be
using hybrid is to decrease errors and increase the
referred to a place or person. Contextual information
accuracy of recommendation results.
can refer to weather condition, location and time. For
For the purpose of this framework we considered a
example in mobile tourist applications time and
hybrid filtering techniques that includes; contextweather conditions can affect the kind of
dependent content filtering and context-dependent

recommendation provided to the tourists. For example

collaborative filtering.
if it is night and cold we cannot suggest swimming as
an activity to be carried out. Context-dependent
IV. PROPOSED CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
recommendation provides recommendations based on
This section presents high level scenario of the framework
contextual user preferences [1].
to give a better idea about its conceptual mechanism. The
Context-dependent recommendations can take place in
framework is expected to provide personalized
three ways; pre-filtering, post-filtering or contextual
recommendation to tourists during trip-phase. The framework
modeling [1]. These filtering processes can be
incorporates user profile, GIS integrated within the framework,
incorporated with any traditional filtering techniques
tourism knowledge-base and recommender filtering techniques.
such as collaborative or content filtering.
Figure 1 illustrates the scenario. A tourist is at the bird park in
Content-filtering recommend items similar rated items
Kuala Lumpur, where the location is denoted by P1. Based on
from the past user experience or preferences [15].
their stated preferences the user is also interested in museums
Content-filtering utilizes the content in the data items
thus, system will display a number of nearby Museums

to predict its relevancy against the user profile. The

denoted by M1. The process of providing recommendations
process of filtering begins by content analysis, learning
considers the user preferences, current context such as the
the user profile and filter items that match the user
time of recommendation (day or night) and location.
profile.
There are number of techniques used to find items that
would be matched against the user profile to provide
recommendations e.g. keyword matching or vector
space model (VSM) with term frequency-inverse
document frequency (TF-IDF) and semantic analysis.
Vector space model with (TF-IDF) this is a form of
keyword matching whereby it applies feature
weighting on the items that would have similarities
with item features available in the user stated
preferences or their previous ratings [21].
The semantic analysis approach considered in the
content-filtering is based on item-profile approach.
Whereby, the stated preferences are matched against
the items available on the tourism knowledge-base.
The main advantage of using semantics to filter items
is that, it will consider the features in the items in
relation to its semantic meaning to provide
recommendations [21].

Collaborative filtering manipulates current user rating

on an item with other users who have previously rated
same or similar item [20], [3]. Collaborative filtering
technique is further divided into two; user-based and
item-based. User-based the system will predict the
Fig. 1: Framework Scenario
current user preferences by grouping users with similar
2013 3rd IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC)
289

Therefore the GIS system will provide the route to the

nearby point of interests specified on the user profile. Tourism

knowledge-base contains a number of touristic concepts such

as attractions including museums etc. The recommendation
filtering techniques will infer the results to be displayed to the
user by considering the following; user current location
provided by the GPS and GIS system to provide the routes
based on the tourist position, the system will extract the nearby
tourist attractions from the tourism knowledge-base and, filter
information based on the stated user preference stored in the
user profile knowledge-base
A. Context-dependent content-filtering
Figure 2 illustrates context-dependent content-filtering.
This filtering process considers user preferences and context
(time and location). Context-dependent pre-filtering technique
is considered before matching the user preferences against the
available items represent in the tourism knowledge-base.
Hence, in our case context is referred to the time of
recommendation (day or night) and the user location. Once the
contextual parameters have been identified a traditional
Fig. 3: Context-dependent collaborative filtering
content-based filtering takes place by matching the user
preferences against the available items. The method used by
CONCLUSION
content-filtering is based on semantic analysis. For example the
The proposed framework highlights the technologies and
tourist is in Bird Park and, based on his explicit user profile he

techniques that can be considered in developing personalized

is also interested in museums. Hence, the recommender system
tourism mobile location-based applications that leverages
will suggest the appropriate point of interests (POI) taking into
semantic web technologies. However, a considerable amount
account user profile and context such as time and location to
of work needs to be conducted to assess the feasibility of the
provide recommendations.
techniques used in activity recommendation and, user profile.
A development of a prototype would be beneficial to gain an
insight on the technological acceptance of the framework at
the implementation level. User privacy concerns need an indepth review as it will mark the acceptance of the framework
with the general public.
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