Current and future directions of multimedia technology in business

Int. J. Virtual Technology and Multimedia, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2010 187

Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism

Dimitris N. Kanellopoulos

Department of Tourism Management,

Technological Educational Institute of Patras,

Meg. Alexandrou 1, Patras GR 263 34, Greece

E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: The future of tourism organisations and enterprises will be information-oriented, knowledge-driven and much of their daily processes will be automated around the internet. The internet, including multimedia, has provided tremendous potential for remote integration and collaboration in business applications. This paper attempts to provide a review of the application of multimedia technology in tourism environments. It justifies the application of multimedia in various tourism sub-domains such as tourism marketing, tourism education, mobile learning for travellers, mobile tourism guides, multimedia kiosks, virtual museums, virtual tours, multimedia travel plans, cooking studios based on web recipes, video conferencing and modelling demand for space tourism services. A conceptual framework for the design of multimedia systems for tourism is presented and discussed. Future research directions are also proposed.

Keywords: multimedia; tourism; multimedia kiosks; multimedia travel plans; mobile tourism guides; location-aware computing; context-aware computing; ontologies.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kanellopoulos, D.N. (2010) ‘Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism’, Int. J. Virtual Technology and Multimedia, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp.187–206.

Biographical notes: Dimitris N. Kanellopoulos holds a PhD in Multimedia Communications from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Patras, Greece. Currently, he is with the Department of Tourism Management at the Technological Educational Institute of Patras. He is also a member of the Educational Software Development Laboratory (ESDLab) in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Patras. His research interests include multimedia communications, intelligent information systems, knowledge representation, web engineering and web-based education. He has authored many papers in international journals and conferences at these areas. He serves as a member of the editorial boards in several academic journals.

1 Introduction

E-tourism is a new research area created by the adoption of Information and

Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the tourism industry (Buhalis and Law, 2008).

ICTs that may be adopted are: electronic commerce, mobile commerce, web services and

188 D.N. Kanellopoulos

web semantics, expert systems and intelligent agents, data mining and data warehousing,

multimedia communications, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), etc.

Nowadays, most of the daily operations of travel enterprises are automated around

the internet, which enables connection to globally distributed resources, personnel and

travellers. The internet provides accurate and specific travel-related information that can

reach the target audience with the accuracy of more personalised information sources.

Multimedia on the internet is becoming one of the key areas of development

that influences tourism (Buhalis and Law, 2008). On the basis of the multimedia

scientific visualisation, tour operators, travel agents, scientists, tourism professionals

and travellers can examine tourism data efficiently with a large degree of comprehension.

Generally, the use of multimedia-enriched web applications in business environment is

considered a necessity for acquiring a competitive advantage in the marketplace

(Gunasekaran and Love, 1999). Essentially, multimedia includes a combination of

multiple types of information such as text, audio, still images, animation, video,

and forms of interactivity content. In a multimedia application, text offers clarity and

self-pacing. Graphics provide visualisation and communicate styles, whereas video

captures the moving events of the world around us. Multimedia technology has been

applied to the tourism industry for various purposes: tourism marketing, tourism

education, personnel training, mobile guiding, web-based virtual museums, web-based

virtual tours, information kiosks, web travel plans, cooking studios based on web recipes,

video conferencing, interaction between executives but also for modelling demand for

radical space tourism services, etc.

Tourism information requires an extensive representation of multimedia data such as

photos and graphics to provide a tangible image or experience to travel planners.

Web applications with multimedia features are particularly useful for dealing

with intangible nature of the tourism service. The most common marketing practices

include the transforming marketing mix variables (promotion, distribution, product and

service, and price) and tangibilising the hotel offerings (using pictures, videos, etc).

Currently, more and more travellers are using tourism multimedia applications such as

mobile tourism guides, information kiosks, virtual museums and web-based tourism

services (Rayman-Bacchus and Molina, 2001). However, no framework has been

proposed to integrate these different types of multimedia applications, while very few

models for multimedia communication systems applied to the tourism industry have been

introduced.

This paper reviews the application of multimedia technology in various sub-domains

of the tourism industry. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework for integrating

tourism multimedia content and services. The proposed framework comprises a generic

model for a multimedia communication system for tourism services. The rest of the paper

is organised as follows. Section 2 presents the relationship between multimedia

and tourism, whereas Section 3 discusses the application of multimedia in tourism.

Section 4 presents a conceptual framework for the design of a multimedia communication

system for tourism. Section 5 discusses future research directions, whereas Section 6

concludes the paper.

Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism 189

2 Multimedia and tourism

Until now, the application areas of multimedia are too many: entertainment,

communication, business, education, industry, manufacturing, tourism and so on.

In communication, multimedia conferencing describes the combination of audio, video

and data conferencing. The integration of audio, video and data conferencing needs a

number of requirements such as the continuous media synchronisation to be addressed.

Multimedia conferencing needs proper architectures and infrastructures for its

implementation (Agius and Angelides, 1997). Gunasekaran and Love state:

“The technical requirements for implementing distributed multimedia applications in business are: a fast processor which can handle high volumes of multimedia data, a high bus bandwidth and efficient input/output based design and architecture, a multimedia operating system to maintain temporal and intermedia synchronisation and support real-time scheduling, high capacity online storage with quick access times and high data transfer rate for effective interchange of multimedia, high-performance, high bandwidth, low time transparency networks and protocols for multimedia data transport, and software development tools for human-computer interfaces and processing multimedia information.” (Gunasekaran and Love, 1999, p.116)

Progressively, more travel agents are interacting with tourism organisations on a global

basis. For example, the World Tourism Organization (WTO)1 has begun to implement

interactive multimedia networks based on bridging technology aimed at connecting large

tourist companies. More and more travellers use mobile tourism guides, multimedia

kiosks, virtual museums and internet-based tourism services (Rayman-Bacchus and

Molina, 2001). Many computer systems linked to the internet store freely accessible

information, thus allowing people to share, disseminate and receive data and software.

The internet can also be used for direct person-to-person communication through the use

of electronic communication forums. Such ease of access to people, data, software,

documents and multimedia is changing the way in which people search for information,

process personal and business communications, and ultimately, solve business problems.

Internet with current and emerging multimedia features provides plenty opportunities and

is particularly useful for dealing with intangible nature of the service and transforming

marketing mix variables to capitalise on the informational and transactional potential of

the internet.

Multimedia–hypermedia combined with semantic web technologies (e.g., ontologies)

will be the mechanism for integrating tourism information in the future (Kanellopoulos

and Panagopoulos, 2008). The semantic web is an extension of the current web in which

information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work

in cooperation (Berners-Lee et al., 2001). The semantic web argues for a set of

technologies and techniques that integrates Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the core of the

web. In the semantic web, we can create complex applications such as intelligent

browsers, intelligent software agents, global databases with data from the web, etc.

The semantic web provides enhanced information access based on the exploitation of

machine-processable metadata. As we shall discuss in Section 4, the use of semantic web

technologies facilitates the integration of tourism multimedia information not only about

tourism resources or providers but also about available multimedia services. Table 1

presents a summary of the main application of multimedia in tourism.


Table 1 The main application of multimedia in tourism

Tourism sub-systems Application areas

Tourism marketing E-commerce, m-commerce, online ordering, printing and publications

Personnel (education and training)

Tutorial, visualisation of tourism data, VR, virtual tour, virtual museums, travel plans, learning by simulation (e.g., cooking simulation), training and education, computer-based instruction, video and compression

Design and creation of tourism services/products

Modelling demand for radical tourism services (e.g., space tourism services), internet, web, semantic web, dynamic packaging, automated storage and retrieval systems, maintenance of multimedia tourism databases

Distribution of tourism information

Multimedia kiosks, Destination Management Systems, mobile tourist guides, mobile services for tourism, virtual tours, virtual museums, travel plans

Administration (corporate management)

Videoconferencing, strategic formulation interactive system, printing and publications, visualisation of tourism data

Traveller’s (management)

Context-aware computing, ubiquitous computing, mobile services for tourism, mobile learning services for travellers, automotive applications, intelligent wireless web services/applications

3 A review of the multimedia applications in tourism

Hereafter, we review the application of multimedia in different sub-domains of tourism.

3.1 Multimedia marketing applications for tourists

Web-based marketing applications enhance the customer’s awareness of travel products

that are available in the marketplace. Travel marketers using the web can locate target

customers, identify their needs, and communicate with them at a relatively low cost.

Marketers may learn much about their targets from examining personal websites by

means of automated web-crawling tools, usually called ‘web robots’. A successful

destination marketing system is targeted at independent travellers and tourist boards

support it. It incorporates design products by listening to the customers and provides

easy-to-book travel products such as airline tickets, accommodations and cultural events.

Through text-and-data mining tools, Lau et al. (2001) argue that they can use of the

personal information on a traveller’s website and identify his or her interests and needs.

On the basis of such understanding, tourism bureaus can send e-mail messages and offer

service packages especially designed for a potential customer, based on the marketer’s

assessment of the individual’s interests.

3.2 Web-based destination management applications

Multimedia information of a variety of tourism destination products such as

entertainment, event/festival, shopping, activity, accommodation, transportation, food

and beverage is provided on the web. Multimedia presentations of travel products on the

web enhance the user’s awareness of these. Destination Management Systems (DMSs)

provide complete and up-to-date information on a particular tourism destination.


A DMS is the ICT infrastructure of a Destination Management Organisation (DMO),

used for the collection, storage, manipulation and distribution of tourism multimedia

information, as well as for the transaction of reservations and other commercial activities

(Buhalis, 2003). DMSs are capable of handling both the pre-trip and the post-arrival

information, as well as of integrating availability and booking service too (Kanellopoulos

and Panagopoulos, 2008).

3.3 Multimedia kiosks

Multimedia kiosks support multiple functions including information provision,

interaction between user and consumer supporting the customisation of information,

transactions (such as ticket purchase), and relationship building through loyalty schemes

or other communication opportunities (Slack and Rowley, 2002). Such kiosks manage

information provision/promotion, interaction, transaction and relationships and represent

a shift from ‘task focus’ to ‘customer focus’ in kiosk design. Multimedia kiosks offer a

range of information and services tailored to the ‘customer in context’. A multimedia

kiosk in a tourism centre focuses on tourism-related transactions and information.

This transition to multi-functionality and the creation of a complete support service for

the ‘customer in context’ necessitates strategic collaboration in the provision of the

information and services that can be accessed through the kiosk. In these instances,

responsibility for the management of the kiosk often lies with an infomediary, who

specialises in kiosks, rather than individual retailers or store groups. In the ESPRIT

Multimodal Multimedia Service Kiosk (MASK) project, a prototype kiosk has been

developed with an innovative, user-friendly interface, combining tactile and vocal input

(Lamel et al., 2002).

3.4 Mobile tourism guides for travellers

The most mobile tourism guides are based on the user map-oriented interaction paradigm.

The Context-aware Mobile Personal Assistant (COMPASS) system provides travellers

with context-aware recommendations and services (Van Setten et al., 2004). CRUMPET

is a European Union project aiming at the “CReation of User-friendly Mobile Services

Personalised for Tourism” relying particularly on agent technology (Schmidt-Belz et al.,

2002). The GUIDE system (Cheverst et al., 2002) provides travellers with up-to-date and

context-aware multimedia information about a city via a Personal Digital Assistant

(PDA). On the basis of the closest access point, the client application determines the

approximate location of the tourist and provides him or her with information about sights,

a map, and the possibility of creating a tour. The access points broadcast information

pages in the geographical area of the cell. Tourists on the move frequently access these

information pages. Krösche et al. (2004) developed the mobiDENK application, which

runs on a PDA with an integrated Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. By locating

the user and showing position and path on an interactive map, the mobiDENK offers

visual navigation support. As the user casually tours an area, the mobiDENK provides

location-based multimedia information about Point of Interests (POIs) along the way

such as monuments and significant historical sites. Alfaro et al. (2005) implemented a

multimedia guide on PDA with each destination installed with infrared emitters.

When tourists approach, their PDAs will automatically display a multimedia presentation

of the destination. Console et al. (2003) presented MASTROCARONTE, a system that


provides personalised tourist multimedia information on board a vehicle. Some tour buses

use GPS technology to automatically project tour-guide videos as the bus passes tourist

attractions. Finally, some restaurants use wireless touch screens, so customers can order

as soon as they are ready.

3.5 Multimedia mobile services for travellers

Broadcast information channels frequently filter information requested by travellers.

For example, if many travellers are interested in the latest cultural events, these events

should be scheduled frequently. On the contrary, if a substantially smaller traveller

community is interested in travelling routes, we would expect this to be scheduled for

broadcast at a much lower frequency, utilising less bandwidth but also introducing

increased latencies to obtain up-to-date information. Mobile services depend on node’s

location and include resource discovery mechanisms that make it possible to find local

services (e.g., the nearest DMS services). Follow-me services are also possible.

Phone calls could be routed to the nearest phone, based on the traveller’s current point of

attachment. Some services may migrate as the travellers move. However, this raises

issues of privacy and traveller tracking (and thus security). While tracking traveller’s

location may be desirable from a resource allocation viewpoint, it is possible to have too

much information about the location of travellers. It is compulsory to treat travellers in an

anonymous fashion for anything but the internal processing demands of the network

(Kanellopoulos and Kotsiantis, 2007).

3.6 Web-based virtual museums

A virtual museum is an interactive electronic museum, where the user can move

electronically from room to room and select any exhibit in any room for a more detailed

examination. The exhibits may cover various subjects (e.g., attractions), each in separate

virtual room. New methods for navigating through a pre-rendered three-dimensional (3D)

space and interacting with objects in that space are employed to facilitate interaction with

the museum. The most popular method is virtual navigation, which uses real-time video

decompression for the display of and interaction with high-quality computer animation.

It employs a representation for 3D objects in animated sequences that permits

pixel-accurate, frame-accurate object picking, so that the user can select any 3D object to

trigger movement within the 3D space, examine an exhibit in animated form, or play a

digital movie. An example of a virtual museum in Geosciences courses is presented in

Patterson (1997).

3.7 Visualisation of tourism data

Multimedia data plays an important part in the process of visualisation. Krygier (1999)

identified cartographic multimedia as having great potential for those engaged in attempts

to understand and represent complex human and social environments through space

and time. Maps used for visualisation can provide links to representational media in a

non-linear fashion. An extensive body of literature provides conflicting definitions of,

and required and satisfactory conditions for, VR, virtual worlds and virtual environments.

The integration of multimedia data into Geographical Information Systems (GISs) at all


levels will substantially increase their effectiveness as analytical tools in the travel

domain.

3.8 Web-based virtual tours

The web allows users to virtually interact with a destination through 3D virtual tours.

A virtual tour is VR simulation of an actually existing location, usually comprising 2D

panoramic images, a sequence of hyperlinked still or video images, or image-based

models of the real location, as well as other multimedia elements such as sound effects,

music, narration and text. Virtual tour viewing evokes an experience of moving

through the represented space. Some virtual tours require the user to travel to the virtual

screening room. The VuPOD2 system comes with a floor plan of the prospective

property and images of all liveable areas, even the ugly ones. The experience within a

computer-mediated environment can simulate real visits, and virtual experience can

provide almost real-life experiences. The 3D interactive websites have been adopted by

online marketers to attract online consumers, encourage online purchases, and to create

loyalty (Fiore et al., 2005). Tourists can get visualised tourism information from digital

maps with aerial and satellite images in 2D and even 3D (Raggam and Almer, 2005).

Users’ interactivity can be further enhanced using multimedia. Abad et al. (2005)

demonstrate how tourist attractions can be presented dynamically by virtual characters

in real time, which is enhanced by the multimedia information about the items stored in a

database. Using the system, visitors can ask for available attractions that correspond

to the selection criteria with ranking based on travellers’ preferences. Interacting

with multimedia-enhanced websites can produce telepresence and allow people to

‘experience’ products and destinations without actually visiting a place.

3.9 Multimedia travel plans

Remarkable progress has been made in the automation of travel planning with the support

of the easy accessibility of information. There are semi-automated commercial service

sites like travelocity.com, expedia.com and orbitz.com (Paprzychi et al., 2002), and

research prototypes of intelligent travel support systems based on software agent

technology (Camacho et al., 2001). Kanellopoulos et al. (2004) introduced the concept of

‘web travel plan’. The elements of a web travel plan are multimedia-based attractions

and accommodations, which are equivalent to physical attractions and accommodations.

Kanellopoulos et al. (2004) designed a novel system that manages semantically enriched

web travel plans. Through their system, web travel plans are more manageable, effective

and adaptive to travellers’ needs. Their system is based on a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network

architecture, and includes a web log analysis module to evaluate how potential travellers

are consuming online web travel plans.

3.10 Multimedia applications for tourism education

In investigating the impact of multimedia for teaching tourism and hospitality students,

Sigala et al. (2001) provided positive evidence of the efficiency and effectiveness of

multimedia-based instruction. Tourism and hospitality education based on the web and

distributed multimedia technologies overcome geographic and time barriers, strained

budgets and overlapping schedule conflicts. Learners can progress and comfort level,


while courses can be taken from any location and at any user-defined time with

consistency of instruction, content and delivery methodology. What is more, the use of

internet in tourism and hospitality instruction may incorporate modules and courses

that allow educators to control and monitor both the learners and their progress.

3.11 Cooking studios based on web recipes

Foods and beverage is a sub-sector of the tourism industry. There are a few multimedia

applications that simulate the stages of cooking visually according to various cooking

scenarios. Such applications generate a scenario, schedule a cooking procedure, and

simulate of cooking dishes that a user has selected. The condition of the cooking process

is displayed using texts, figures, movies and time charts. Cooking scenarios are usually

generated from web recipes based on a cooking schema, which is a format for

fundamental elements such as: description of a dish, ingredients and instructions. In the

system proposed by Takano and Ueshima (2004), a cooking scenario is generated, as it is

defined in terms of XML such as to express specifically cooking process. Their system

collects recipes from the web and analyses them morphologically and semantically.

3.12 Mobile learning services for travellers

Boundaries between services and learning are diminishing, as specific and accurate

knowledge is increasingly needed for short-term purposes and the provision of

information and learning material is more and more considered a service (Dye et al.,

2003). Mobile learning devices allow for accurate and instant learning items (info) on

site, whether the traveller is interested in learning more about the museum or the city

he or she is about to visit, the mountain he or she is about to climb or the historic roots

and geographic or linguistic peculiarities of the country he or she is about to traverse.

In this respect, mobile learning offers more than just providing an electronic travel guide.

In tourism, knowledge and learning are highly estimated while the technical equipment

such as PDAs, GPRS3 standards on mobile phones or wireless internet access is widely

distributed. In such environment, mobile learning services for travellers provide an

opportunity to deliver unique services.

3.13 Intelligent wireless web: Context-aware computing for the traveller

Alesso and Smith define Intelligent Wireless Web (IWW) as a

“… network that provides anytime, anywhere access to information resources with efficient user interfaces and applications that learn and thereby provide increasingly useful services whenever and wherever needed.” (Alesso and Smith, 2001)

IWW aims to integrate the ever-increasing intelligence in the environment of the

traveller. The key feature of the IWW is the separation of data from presentation and

applications. This separation allows the reuse of the existing desktop ICT infrastructure

for service delivery to both wired and wireless users (Kanellopoulos and Kotsiantis,

2006). Context-aware computing plays an instrumental role in realisation of the vision of

the IWW by allowing travel applications to better understand user’s context and adapt

services to the interpreted context, thereby ensuring that the busy traveller gets highly


specific data and services. Context-aware computing is the use of environmental

characteristics such as the user’s location, time, profile, identity and activity to inform

the computing device so that it may provide information to the user that is relevant to the

current context. In a context-aware computing system, user’s interaction with the system

can be reduced by using context as a filtering mechanism to put context-relevant

information to the users. This has the potential to increase the usability by decreasing

the level of interaction required between the mobile devices and the end-users.

The emergence of complementary technologies such as ubiquitous computing, user

profiling, and sensor networking enables the capture of many other context parameters.

The application of context awareness has been demonstrated in a large number of tourism

applications (Laukkanen et al., 2002), museums (Fleck et al., 2002) and route planning

(Marmasse and Schmandt, 2002). For example, the Ambience4 project focuses on

creating a digital environment that is aware of a person’s presence, context, and

sensitivity and responds accordingly.

3.14 Ubiquitous computing applications

Ubiquitous computing is an emerging paradigm of personal computing, characterised

by the shift from the dedicated computing machinery to pervasive computing capabilities

embedded in our everyday environments (Weiser, 2003). Realisation of the vision

of the ubiquitous computing has become possible because of the advances in different

technologies including: sensors, wireless and wired communications, memory, processor

architectures, software technologies and communication systems such as mobile phones,

internet and the web. Recently, several projects have focused on ubiquitous computing.

These projects include IBM’s pervasive computing,5 Xerox PARC’s ubiquitous

computing6 and the MIT’s Oxygen7 initiative. Ubiquitous computing technologies can

play a key role by bridging the gap between the physical world of travel operations and

the virtual world enabled by the ICT infrastructure. Although many tourism collaboration

applications make extensive use of virtual project environments, in reality, a significant

working time of the traveller is spent on activities in the physical environment.

Ubiquitous computing technologies have the potential to make collaborative processes

and services sensitive to the data available in the physical world.

3.15 Video-conferencing applications

Travellers can use video-conferencing applications to share travel experiences. Such

applications can transform and re-engineer business processes. According to Agius and

Angelides (1997), video conferencing comes in two main varieties:

1 store-and-forward video mail

2 real-time video conferencing.

Store-and-forward video mail allows participants to send and receive asynchronously

multimedia-enhanced electronic mail. Such applications are typically built on standard

multimedia messaging infrastructures so that they may be incorporated into other

applications. Although video mail is non-interactive, it still requires considerable

processing power for sending the messages and plenty hard disk space for storing them.

Real-time video conferencing is less demanding on the host, because the video passes


through the machine without holding up the processor or system bus, and there is rarely

any need to save it to disk.

3.16 Applications modelling demand for space tourism services

Space tourism provides new radical services (Crouch et al., 2009). The problem of

modelling demand for radically new services, technologies, and products has much

in common with non-market traded goods because they do not exist, and typically will

not exist for some time. Therefore, one cannot expect samples of consumers to know

about or have experience with the offerings. So, lack of knowledge or experience pose

challenges for researchers. One solution involves Acceleration of Information Methods

(AIMs) (Urban et al., 1997). AIMs rely on multimedia and other technologies and can

simulate the processes by which tourists become aware of space tourism products and

services, search for and acquire information about benefits or problem solutions, decide

whether to consider them and whether they can take advantage of what they offer, decide

if they want to buy a product now available, or wait to see how the product market

develops and evolves over time. Information Acceleration (IA) uses information and

multimedia technology to ‘accelerate’ consumer learning and experience, enabling one to

develop and implement Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) surveys that include a wide

array of information, features, risk/benefits and contexts that consumers need to

understand and experience to make informed decisions about future services.

Coltman et al. (2004) discuss case study applications involving voice-activated

interactive PDAs, advanced commercial websites and new forms of space tourism.

In particular, they discuss designing and implementing AIMs quickly and easily by

automating as much of the process available.

4 A framework for the design of multimedia systems in tourism

In this section, we provide a conceptual framework and propose guidelines for the design

of a multimedia communication system for tourism. Figure 1 demonstrates the role of

semantic annotation on multimedia content as an integrating mechanism for the various

tourism sub-systems identified in Table 1. In the tourism context, multimedia annotation

can improve the integration between functional multimedia sub-systems (as indicated in

Figure 1) by effective and efficient information flow between functional sub-systems.

Improved information flow using multimedia will enhance employees’ ability to

understand a tourism business’s mission, and business’s strategies.

In the semantic web, such integration can be achieved by semantic annotation of

tourism multimedia content. Semantic annotation is the process of inserting tags in

web resources to assign semantics. Actually, the semantic web provides tools for explicit

markup of web content and it is based on a set of languages such as the Resource

Description Framework (RDF), DAML + OIL and Web Ontology Language (OWL).

These languages can be used to annotate web content, while they have well-defined

semantics and inferential procedures that let software agents draw inferences from the

languages’ statements.

There are many semantic annotation approaches that can be categorised according

to the degree of automation of annotation tasks, and the type of web resources that can be

annotated, etc. Semantic annotation approaches have been proposed for the annotation


of images (Wielemaker et al., 2003), audio (Cano and Koppenberger, 2004) and video

(Bloehdorn et al., 2005). The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has started a

Multimedia Annotation on the Semantic Web Task Force8 as part of the Semantic Web

Best Practices and Deployment Working Group (Stamou et al., 2006). One goal is to

provide guidelines for using semantic web languages and technologies to create, store,

manipulate, interchange and process image metadata. Another is to study interoperability

issues between multimedia annotation standardisation frameworks (such as MPEG-7,9

Dublin Core10 and VRA11) and RDF-and OWL-based approaches.

Figure 1 The multimedia industry in tourism: application touch point wheel (see online version for colours)

Generally, ontologies constitute the main element of the semantic web and provide

conceptual models for interpreting the information provided by webpages

(Chandrasekaran et al., 1999). For example, an ontology of the travel domain might

contain concepts such as a ‘tourist destination’ and ‘means of transportation’ and

relationships between these terms. Computational processes and intelligent software

agents interpret semantic content and derive consequences from the information they

collect. Semantic annotation of tourism multimedia content enables the deployment

of intelligent tourism applications that could reason over multimedia metadata.

For example, using the semantic markup for the ‘Official Travel’s’ webpage reporting

travel characteristics, an intelligent software agent could learn that the current tourism

destination is ‘Paris’. The agent might further learn that from the “Official Destination

Board of Paris” website’s semantic markup that all travels to Paris are obtained using the

‘British Airways’ airlines. Combining the two pieces of information, the intelligent agent

could infer that this travel to Paris will be achieved using the ‘British Airways’ airlines.


Now let us consider an example. In the post-purchase experience (Figure 1) when

tourists return from a tour, they like to have a reminder of the trip and share their travel

experiences. Therefore, automatic tracing of the tour and composition of tour summaries

are desired. The “visualisation of tourism data” component could be responsible for this

task using an intelligent agent for this purpose. The travel-related information,

used during the previous stage (i.e., purchase experience), can be searched and

exploited effectively, if the travel-related multimedia content is semantics – annotated

(Kanellopoulos and Panagopoulos, 2008). If this is in force, semantic querying is possible

and intelligent agents can automatically process travel-related multimedia metadata.

From another perspective, semantics would enable the integration of various semantic

web services for tourism (Paolucci and Sycara, 2003). If we introduce semantics to web

services, this will bring the following advantages:

1 semantically enriched tourism web services will handle the interoperability

at the technical level; that is, they will make multimedia communication applications

for tourism to talk to each other independent of the hardware and software platform

2 semantics will be used also for the discovery and composition of tourism

web services.

4.1 Requirements of tourism multimedia services

Considering the characteristics of a multimedia communication system together with the

structure of the processes executed in the tourism environment, a set of requirements

for the successful application of multimedia communication services in tourism can be

produced:

4.1.1 Requirements at the user level

• The tourism-related functions must be incorporated in the multimedia

communication services

• Effective generation and presentation of the different information types

of interest, paying attention to the capabilities of available terminals and services

• Dynamic control of applications with regard to connections, interactions, and quality

on demand combined with user-friendly and transparent human/machine interfaces

• Intelligent support of users examining their individual propensities

• Encouragement of collaboration between the users of the system.

4.1.2 Infrastructure requirements

• Network infrastructure characterised by high-speed performance and flexibility

• Several virtual connections over the same access (including flexible/dynamic

channel allocation)

• Multiple concurrent users, participating in more than one concurrent

multimedia sessions


• Synchronisation of continuous media types (e.g., audio, video)

• Various service qualities like Quality of Service (QoS)

• Support for all media types

• Seamless integration, unrestricted by time or space

• Real-time information storage and retrieval.

4.2 The proposed framework

Tourism-related processes have a dynamic character, and thus it is a difficult task to

design and implement an effective and efficient multimedia communication system

proper for various tourism-related processes. The proposed framework comprises a

generic model for a tourism multimedia communication system (Figure 2). The generic

model follows the layered paradigm, and is built up according to the discussed

requirements. For each layer, its constituent elements are identified and discussed.

The constituent elements of the layers are replaced by specific solutions offered by

current or state-of-the-art technology, which are able to satisfy the requirements.

Figure 2 The proposed model of a multimedia communication system for tourism

4.2.1 The infrastructure layer

End-computing infrastructure: Great processing power is required to implement codecs,

multimedia file systems and corresponding file formats, and to allow high-speed data

compression. In addition, the data-intensive nature of media types such as digital video


and audio requires large volumes of storage capacity and sufficient data transfer

bandwidth. Therefore, the use of a multimedia system based on a powerful RISC

processor with fast main memory, high bus bandwidth and efficient I/O is proposed.

Fast, high capacity hard drives, RAID systems and optical storage devices are considered

to be the most important suitable storage technologies. A computer system suitable for

multimedia applications must also be able to support the effective input and output of the

various information types.

Network infrastructure: Multimedia applications for tourism-related processes require

usually a broadband network infrastructure because in such applications bandwidth

limitations cannot be ignored, mainly those referring to video quality. Concerning

reliability, most multimedia applications can tolerate errors in transmission due to

corruption or packet loss without retransmission or correction. In some cases,

to meet real-time delivery requirements or to achieve synchronisation, some packets are

even discarded. Additionally, multimedia networks must provide the low latency required

for interactive operation, and must be able to support multipoint communication,

as opposed to traditional point-to-point communication. Techniques such as SDH and

ATM allow voice, data, and video traffic to be transported easily over the same network

at a variety of speeds. For the internet, the use of the IPv6 protocol is considered

to be necessary. To build this infrastructure, fibre optics are needed as an enabler,

in combination with the use of the SONET standard. For the future, we propose the use of

the technology of Passive Optical Networks (PONs), which will enable both-way

broadband delivery capabilities down to the user (traveller). The evolution of this

technology will eventually result in the deployment of fibre optics in the local loop Fibre

In The Loop (FITL) and to All Optical Networks (AONs). Wireless technologies based

on TDMA and CDMA are also under evaluation for use in the local loop or for

interfacing with Personal Communication Networks and Systems (PCNs or PCSs).

4.2.2 Distributed processing layer

The main element of the distributed processing layer is the operating system, which

provides an easy environment for the execution of tourism multimedia applications,

and ensures the effective use of the infrastructure. The operating system offers various

services related to essential resources, such as the network, CPU, main memory, storage,

and all input and output devices. However, a multimedia communication system requires

additional services from the operating system. Such services are:

• Support for new data types

• Compression and decompression functionalities for video

• Unified media input and output control

• Priority control (pre-emptive scheduling)

• Inter-media synchronisation

• Graphical User Interface (GUI) with voice and video

• Application Programming Interface (API), which keeps physical, input

and output transparent


• Standard multimedia format and protocol

• High-speed communication control

• Distributed file system, e.g., Network File System (NFS)

• Distributed object management

• Remote database access

• Distributed transaction processing for database applications

• Global directory (name/address) management for assuring wide area

distribution transparency.

These services can be provided by a multitasking/multithreading operating system,

which is based on the principles of object-oriented design and client/server architecture.

Current operating systems incorporate the above-mentioned additional services, either as

device driver, or as extensions based on the existing operating system structure.

4.2.3 Groupware layer

In the tourism industry, travel agents and tourism business professionals can be

considered as a group, because they communicate directly and have some or all of the

following characteristics: communication, identification, long life and motivation.

Documents, text, video, etc., needed for collaboration is exchanged and shared between

all the members of the group. Thus, the members of the group can see and process

the same-shared information. Consequently, cross-disciplinary work such as discussions,

suggestions, or joint creation of documents is possible. Groupware can facilitate such

interactions. In our model, we propose the use of a groupware platform, which utilises the

hypermedia concept and includes suitable CSCW tools, an Electronic Document System

(EDS), using either the Document Image Processing (DIP) technology, or the Text

Management & Retrieval (TM&R) technology (or even a combination of these two), and

the World Wide Web (WWW, W3) tool, for the interconnection of HTML hypermedia

information objects (pages). The suggested CSCW tools are object-orientated,

user-friendly software development tools for tourism multimedia applications

(authoring systems), tools for retrieval and data management, which are important for

large, heterogeneous, networked, and distributed multimedia systems, aids for navigation

through hypermedia information (context-dependent searching, object and pattern

recognition), and tools for the coordination of cooperative teleworking (management of

documents, actions, authorisations, etc.). Intelligent user agents are key modules of the

groupware platform and guide the user in a variety of operations, hiding from him, as far

as possible, the telecommunication and information storage and processing technologies.

A user agent exercises only local control and must cooperate with system agents

responsible for global control (e.g., system management, directories, message handling).

The agent technology can be combined with VR to offer VR group applications

(e.g., virtual travel plans), where individuals directly interact and collaborate within a

simulated world. In the web, new technologies such as Virtual Reality Modelling

Language (VRML) and the Java language are towards this direction.


4.2.4 Application layer

The application layer determines the practical value of the proposed model. The main

elements of this layer are the user interface, the application structure and the information

content. Distributed tourism multimedia applications are proposed to

• Provide intelligent support to users with the use of suitable system error and

information messages and help services (context-sensitive and real-time help).

• Provide a friendly and consistent GUI designed according to strict ergonomic

criteria. Such a GUI has to present the information in comprehensible formats.

• Allow interaction with structured, objective knowledge in a way that enables

the user to absorb concepts and develop schemata, derive an understanding of their

use and test that understanding by appropriate investigations and exercises.

• Support learning on both an individual and a group basis.

• Allow not only the users great flexibility in finding their way through the knowledge,

which is made available to them, but also an instructor to monitor and,

if necessary, direct the progress of each individual student.

• Facilitate the user to build representations and models, analyse, browse, search,

compare and evaluate, reason and hypothesise, synthesise, manipulate and modify,

experiment, catalogue, store, and retrieve.

• Consider possible hardware limitations of the user.

• Annotate multimedia tourism content using proper tools.

5 Future research

In this section, we recommend some future research directions that would improve

integration based on multimedia.

• Semantic annotation of tourism multimedia content would enable the deployment

of intelligent tourism multimedia applications that could reason over multimedia

metadata. By merging and aligning existing good practices in multimedia industry

with current technological advances of the semantic web would give metadata

providers immediate payoff because they could directly benefit from publicly

available semantic web software.

• Multimedia can be used for modelling demand for radically new tourism services.

AIMs can simulate the processes by which tourists become aware of radical tourism

services (e.g., space tourism services), products and technologies. IA can use

information and multimedia technology to ‘accelerate’ traveller learning and

experience to make informed decision about radical tourism services.

• Tourism multimedia communication systems should be designed such as to be

multimodal, proactive, and easily accessible outside the desktop to a wide range

of users.


• A multimodal system responds to inputs in more than one modality

or communication channel (e.g., speech, gesture, writing, and others).

The interaction with a tourism multimedia collection (e.g., a museum selection)

depends on how the collection is indexed. Therefore, multimodal interaction

techniques constitute a future research challenge.

• A proactive multimedia system understands cultural and social contexts

and responds accordingly. Tourism multimedia system should use cultural cues

during interaction and during analysis. The cultural differences in semantic

tourism content span every level of multimedia content pyramid from

low-level features (e.g., colours used) to high-level semantics (e.g., different

communication styles between users of various nationalities). Therefore,

we must develop culture-specific automatic analysis techniques.

• We can create and access tourism multimedia content using mobile systems

(e.g., 3G mobile phones) or non-mobile systems. However, the future

of tourism multimedia applications lies outside the desktop, and semantic

annotation on multimedia content will become the main access mechanism

to tourism information and services across the envisaged semantic web.

• We should focus research efforts on the integration of multiple sensors and media

having the tourist as the starting point.

• We should also consider the social, economic and cultural context in which

multimedia technology for tourism purposes might be deployed. For example,

we have to consider the social, economic and cultural implications of ubiquitous

computing applied to the travel industry.

• Finally, we must create new interdisciplinary academic programmes to tackle the

issues discussed and involve researchers across disciplines.

6 Conclusions

In this paper, we reviewed the applications of multimedia technology in tourism.

We proposed a conceptual framework for improving the information flow

(communication) between the various functional multimedia sub-systems in tourism.

Improved information flow can be achieved by semantically annotating the tourism

multimedia content using ontology tools. Semantic annotation on multimedia data can be

used for integrating and searching semantically tourism multimedia content. Semantic

annotation of tourism multimedia content enables the deployment of intelligent tourism

applications that could reason over multimedia metadata. By this way, the proposed

framework improves the integration of these sub-systems and brings users (e.g.,

personnel, tourists) and various elements of multimedia sub-systems together. Therefore,

the framework improves productivity and quality. Important benefits can be achieved,

if multimedia is used effectively. For example, an interactive multimedia application can

reduce the lead-time for transferring information and thus to improve the effectiveness of

a tourism service. The proposed framework comprises a generic model for a multimedia

communication system for tourism. The generic model follows the layered paradigm, and

is built up according to the specific requirements imposed by tourism-related processes.


Multimedia can also support new tourism environments such as virtual tours and

modelling demand for radical tourism services (e.g., space tourism services). However,

production and delivery systems of multimedia content and services in support of tourism

have to be coherently developed, and bring to maturity on the delivery mechanisms.

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Notes 1World Tourism Organization: http://www.unwto.org/index.php 2The VuPOD system: http://www.vupods.com/ 3General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). It is a packet-oriented mobile data service available to users of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and IS-136 mobile phones.

4The Ambience project: http://www.extra.research.philips.com/euprojects/ambience/ 5The IBM’s pervasive computing: http://www.research.ibm.com/thinkresearch/pervasive.shtml 6Xerox PARC’s ubiquitous computing: http://www.parc.com/about/default.html 7MIT’s Oxygen initiative: http://oxygen.lcs.mit.edu/Overview.html 8W3C. The Multimedia Annotation on the Semantic Web Task Force: http://www.w3. org/2001/sw/BestPractices/MM/

9ISO/IEC, “Overview of the MPEG-7 Standard; Version 6.0” ISO/IECJTC1/SC29/WG11/N4980, 2001. The MPEG-7 describes the multimedia content data that supports some degree of interpretation of the information meaning.

10Dublin Core Community, “Dublin Core ElementSet, Version 1.1”, 2003, ISO Standard 15836 2003, 2003; http://www.niso.org/international/SC4/n515.pdf. It provides a small set of descriptors that quickly drew global interest from various information providers in the arts, sciences, education, business and government sectors.

11Virtual Resource Association, VRA Core 3.0; http://www.vraweb.org/vracore3.htm. VRA Core 3.0 consists of a single element set that can be applied as many times required to create records to describe works of visual culture and the images that document them.

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