دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی یک سیستم پشتیبانی تصمیم گیری برای برنامه ریزی تور شهری آنلاین اتوبوس - اشپرینگر 2017

Abstract

Tourism is rapidly becoming a sustainable pathway toward economic prosperity for host countries and communities. Recent advances in information and communications technology, the smartphone, the Internet and Wi-Fi have given a boost to the tourism industry. The city bus tour (CBT) service is one of the most successful businesses in the tourism industry. However, there exists no smart decision support system determining the most efficient way to plan the itinerary of a CBT. In this research, we report on the ongoing development of a mobile application (app) and a website for tourists, hoteliers and travel agents to connect with city bus operators and book/purchase the best CBT both in terms of cost and time. Firstly, the CBT problem is formulated as an asymmetric sequential three-stage arc routing problem. All places of interest (PoI) and pickup/dropout points are identified with arcs of the network (instead of nodes), each of which can be visited at least once (instead of exactly once). Secondly, the resulting pure integer programming (IP) problem is solved using a leading optimization software known as General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS). The GAMS code developed for this project returns: (1) the exact optimal solution identifying the footprints of the city bus relative to all the arcs forming the minimal cost network; (2) the augmenting paths corresponding to the pickup stage, the PoI visiting stage and the drop-off stage. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability of the mobile app/website via a pilot study in the city of Melbourne (Australia). All the computations relative to the initial tests show that the ability of the app to answer users’ inquiries in a fraction of a minute.

6 Conclusion

This study has presented a concrete attempt to promote tourism industry using ICT. In particular, it has shown how an advanced app and website can be developed using a CBT scheme, that is, a city bus service that allows tourists to visit the major landmarks in a short span of time.

First, we have investigated the role of ICT and, in particular, of the smartphone in the tourism industry in a broader sense. Hence, we have developed an efficient and smart way to plan the itinerary of a city bus catering to bus operators as well as tourists by minimizing operation (mileage) costs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no systematic DSS has been formulated or applied to the city bus system, even though it is far from being a new business. This study attempts to fill this knowledge gap. To this end, a mobile app and a website supported by GAMS (a leading optimization software) have been designed and are being developed to optimize the operations of the city bus business. The app/website offers a variety of tour options indicating a list of landmarks to be visited. The customers including hoteliers, travel agents and tourists can then book and purchase appropriate tour plans based on the seats available online. The customers are also required to indicate pickup/dropout locations which can be chosen from either a list of pre-planned stops or among places of their own convenience and choice. The choice of pickup/dropout places may be subject to an additional charge depending on the fleet availability, schedule of the itinerary and proximity. The app/website then delivers a confirmation note as well as an exact itinerary plan with departure and arrival times.