An application of Location Based Services and GIS in Tourism Management and Promotion 

MAURIZIO GIBIN, Post PhD Scholar, University of Eastern Piedmont

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Working paper n. 11 , February 2006

The paper presents a case study developed during the Vespucci Summer School for Geographic Information Science in 2003. The author’s team proposed an innovative solution for guided tours in the city of Florence solving the problem of cutting the costs of travel guides and providing high added value services cheap and flexible. CICER1 applies all the research topics covered during the Location Based Services module of the Vespucci Summer School, involving mobile technologies and positioning systems. The approach used is practical and lead by the technical feasibility of CICER1. The author introduces the concepts of Location Based Services, Point of Interest and Portable Digital Assistants with a focus on their combined use to create a mobile localisation system that provides targeted real time geographic information to pedestrian tourists in a urban environment.

1. Introduction

Few years ago, Location Based Services (LBS) were thought to be the killer application of mobile communication market. Even if their importance has been resized, telecom operators are investing in this field of research to create added value services and to get more returns. The commercial diffusion of portable devices, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and navigation systems stimulates and drives the need of geographic information in real time. This need extends itself to each domain of the “space” in which people are located. Its satisfaction enables some sort of spatial reasoning and answers to questions like: “Where am I?”, “What am I close to?” or “Where do I have to go?”. Real time is fundamental when geographic information regards places do not belong to the sphere of everyday life and decisions that have to be taken fast. Urban tourism is a good starting scenario for applications involving Location Based Services because places are partially known and because the main way of enjoying the leisure experience is walking. CICER1 represents an ambitious attempt of LBS through a point of interest database created through a field survey and implemented in a portable Geographical Information System (GIS) application targeted to urban tourists. The paper is structured as follows. First I briefly define Location Based Services using either academic and non academic sources, underlining the different classifications and focusing on one. I present the starting scenario from which CICER1 took place: the problem of a Tour Operator trying to cut human resources without a lack of quality in the service. I illustrate the steps followed by the development team for the implementation of CICER1, including technical solutions and methodologies. At the end are presented some comments and a brief conclusion about the system created.