2.

0 Chapter II
Review of Related Literature and Studies
This Chapter reviews the related literature and studies to provide the background
orientation and proper direction of the study. The reviews helped the researchers in the
preparation of the general plan and enriched the information and knowledge about some
specific details on the subject under investigation.

The following books, journal, publication and studies were reviewed. These gave the
researchers information and guidelines in the research.

2.1 Related Literature

2.1.0 Introduction
In the mid 90’s the development of mobile technology turned from being simple mobile
phones to becoming more and more powerful devices. Computers became smaller and PDA’s
(Personal Digital Assistants) started to appear on the market. This triggered new needs on the
market and new needs were also created. The public has become increasingly more dependent
on their mobile devices and researchers came up with new ideas to combine the powerful
mobile technology with other common activities. Traveling and tourism are two important
features in most people’s lives. In recent times researchers have worked on the issues
regarding a possible replacement of the traditional tourist guidebooks and maps with electronic
equivalents. Since the middle of the 1990’s several context-aware mobile guides have been
developed. Abowd and Dey (2004) state that context can be defined like this: “Context is any
information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity. An entity is a person,
place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application,
including the user and applications themselves”. If the word awareness is taken out of its
context from the word context-awareness, it can be discovered if it is looked up in a dictionary,
that when a user is aware of something, the user is aware how to use i.e. a device, which can
be connected up to the word information. Korkeaaho (2000) stated that context- awareness is
the ability to use context information.

2.1.1 Electronic Maps

To be able to guide tourists with a mobile tourist guide, maps have to be implemented in
the software. The users must have the possibility to have an overview of their whereabouts and
tobe able to understand where they are going next. There have been presented many different
types of maps that have been used in the mobile tourist guides, without necessarily finding
which type of map is the most suitable for this kind of devices.
In the Tellmaris project mentioned by Kray and Laakso (2005) a combination between
2D and 3D maps were used. This particular type of map was tested on a limited number of
people and the 3D map was the one that gave the best result. The 3D map gave the user the
possibility to have two types of views while using the map, pedestrian view and birds-eye view.
Pedestrian view illustrated the view on walking level, while the birds-eye view illustrated the
feeling of flying or hovering over the ground. The issue raised here, was the problem with how
far up the hovering should take place. If it took place too far up, there would be difficulties to
keep track on the map, while too low would make the user lose overview over the map and feel
disoriented. The ideal solution is not yet clear, but to hover approximately 10 meters above
ground seem to be a good height which will give the user a good overview of the map and
where to go (Brewster and Dunlop, 2004). This introduced the oriented maps. Task oriented
maps take into consideration what kind of tasks the tourists normally perform and how the map
can be adapted to suit the different tasks in a best possible way. The different tasks are divided
into four main groups, which can be subdivided into new subgroups. This describe the two most
prominent tasks a map performs as orientation and navigation, but as close followers, maps are
also used as a tool for exploration and planning. The four distinct tasks a map-based mobile
tourist guide must consider are
therefore:

1. Thematic areas, navigation and way- finding,

2. Localisation and orientation,
3. Proximity and events,
4. General information seeking and identification

2.1.1 The CyberGuide

The system that can be found closest to an ideal mobile tourist guide system is the
Cyberguide. (Baltzer: ACM Wireless Networks, Vol. 3. 2004). The research on this system
started in the early 2000’s and the research group developed over a year’s time the Cyberguide.
The system was developed to be futuristic and the main idea was to continue the research and
development later on. The two research groups, Future Computing Environments (FCE) Group
within the College of Computing and the Graphics, Visualization and Usability (GVU Center) at
Georgia Institute of Technology, developed prototypes for indoor and outdoor usage. Their long-
term goal was to develop a system that identifies where the tourist is and can predict any
answer he/she might ask about the things he or she are looking at. The possibility of interaction
with the environment and fellow tourists is also an opportunity the Cyberguide would ideally
offer to its users. The research groups’ short-term goal was to prototype different versions of the
Cyberguide on commercially available equipment, such as PDA’s and pen-based PCs. The
equipment had a large screen for visualization of the surroundings using maps and the research
groups also aimed towards locating the current position of the unit and by that, also locate the
user of the unit. The Cyberguide is divided into four main sections of design: the cartographer
which is a map component; the librarian that provides the information about the different sights;
the navigator that locates the device and the tourist; and last the messenger that allows the
tourist to interact by sending and receiving messages like an instant messaging service. These
sections are used both in the outdoor and the indoor prototype.

2.2 Related Studies

2.2.1 Local Studies
The world is surrounded everywhere by computer. They're convenient and allow us to
access whatever information we need in an instant, even with the tourism industry.

Tourism is divided between the tourists and the place they want to visit who believe that
there is no risk in a tourist trip and those who have already concluded that we should be more
creative in using the new technology with the tourism industry. At any rate, an increasing
percentage of the tourists has become and is becoming ever more mobile-based travelers. In
relation to this innovation, some studies have been conducted to show advantages of using
mobile technologies for tourism purposes.

The study of Michelle Hyde R. Pagsiyuin, Eric Boy T. Salazar and Hazel C. Caballes of
Sacred Herat College entitled “Lakbay Quezon: Web-based Geographic Tourist Guide and
Inforamation System (2005)” is a study that helps the user to be familiar with Quezon Province.
This software informs the user by giving them information such as the districts and
municipalities of Quezon Province, history, festivals, historical landmarks and churches, scenic
pots, hotels, resorts,and nature products.

Maria Wena David’s “Travel Around Luzon – An Online Travel Guide (2005)” promotes
the beauty of Luzon uisng suitable promotional tools. It provide efficient and more reliable way
of accessing information about Luzon. This will be a great help to the society an a way that the
study could be the step in the technological advancement in terms of travel guides.

2.2.2 Foreign Studies

The following studies were the proponent’s tools to navigate and to support the study:

“The increasing popularity of mobile devices presents an opportunity for developing

innovative mobile tourism services for tourism-related organizations. While there is much
research on mobile tourism applications and on tourist needs and behavior, there is
comparatively less work on studying the types of services they desire. The present study aims
to determine mobile services that are important from the tourists' perspective using a factor
analytic approach. This was first done via a survey of the literature and confirmed by a focus
group. The set of candidate tourism services was then translated into a questionnaire for
determining their appropriateness for mobile tourism. Thereafter, exploratory and confirmatory
factor analytic procedures were performed. Our findings show that tourists appear to favor basic
services such as those providing information about transportation, accommodation and food,
while advanced ones such as context-aware services and trip planning were deemed
comparatively less desirable. Practical and theoretical implications of our findings are also
discussed.”

“DETERMINING SERVICES FOR

THE MOBILE TOURIST”
By Goh, Dion H,Ang, Rebecca P,Lee, Chei Sian,Lee
And Chu Keong

“The term of context in mobile computing area especially in the spatio-temporal

applications introduces a rich source of information, yet it has less been regarded and modelled
in the related fields. Since a tourist may be considered as a moving object in an environment
with variable contexts, therefore tourist guide applications and services is taken into account as
an application area for the context-aware systems. To implement such a dynamic service-
based applications, in this paper, we propose a framework for personal tourist guide (PTG)
system based on service oriented architecture (SOA). In our proposed framework, PTG send a
request based on the context of user to a catalogue. Service brokers collaborate to find the right
services and then, PTG and service provider negotiate as to format of the request and some
other protocol issues. At the last step, tourist may utilize the provided services. To evaluate this
framework, a simple case study was developed. The results show its superiority over the
traditional architectures. “

“A CONTEXT-AWARE MOBILE TOURIST GUIDE SYSTEM ON

A SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE”
By R. A. Abbaspour* and F. Samadzadegan

“Tourism today, is one of the largest, if not the largest, industry in the world and the
majority
of the public have been travelling at one point in their lives. The holiday experience is a
business with unlimited resources and the experience is taken further and developed every
single day. Holidays that are fitted to suit the individual needs are offered, but there is one issue
regarding tourism that have not changed for many years, the traditional tourist maps and guide
books. Most people at one time or another has used maps and guidebooks and the experience
using these helping “tools” are divided. The latest decade the technology has developed rapidly
and computers have become smaller and available for the private users as well as for business
purposes. This opens a door to a new market where handheld computers and mobile
technology can improve and renew areas that have been the same for years, like the usage of
the traditional tourist maps and guidebooks. The mobile tourist guide takes advantage of the
latest technologies and can take tourism to a new level when it comes to navigation and
guidance of tourists.
This thesis investigates the issues around the mobile tourist guide and how it can be
made more suitable for people who travel in groups and also how mobile tourist guides will be
welcome on the market, which is already fully booked with gadgets and electronic devices.
A prototype was developed using a smartphones connected to GPS where the focus is sat on
the group rather than the individual and localization of fellow travelers is simulated”

“Mobile Tourist Guide”

By Frøy Birte Bjørneseth
University of Strathclyde