GR/AP/BT Improving the Web-based Destination Recommender System DestiRec

The domain of travel and tourism is complex for recommender systems, because the items to be recommended, e.g. travel destinations, have many facets. In previous work, we have developed DestiRec, a Web-based solution for destination recommendation [1] (www.destirec.com). The application allows for interactive specification of preferences (e.g. travel month, activities) and adapts recommended travel regions instantly on a map.

The goal of this Bachelor’s Thesis, Guided Research or Application Project is to further improve and enhance this application, specific ideas include:

• User Management and Personalisation: basic user management (login) to store preferences and already visited regions, handle watchlists and favorite regions, (manually) create sequences of regions and adapt the recommendation to the personal information
• Visitor Index and Peak Seasons: extend the region model of best times to travel by month with information about visitor numbers and peak seasons, investigate acquiring this data , and modify the algorithm
• Preference Elicitation Methods: add additional methods for acquiring user preferences (so far, mostly sliders for activities and checkboxes for travel months are supported), e.g. users could upload their favorite travel pictures, and compare different methods in a user study

It is possible to split the features among several students and work on the topic in a small team. The application was developed with the open-source JavaScript library ReactJS, so good programming skills in ReactJS are a prerequisite for this project. Please send your application (brief CV, transcript of records and short motivation statement including ReactJS experience) to Wolfgang Wörndl (woerndl@cit.tum.de) until March 14th. (Decision and possible start soon after this date, a Guided Research or Application Project has to be registration by the first week of the new semester.)

[1] Asal Nesar Noubari, Wolfgang Wörndl: Dynamic Adaptation of User Preferences and Results in a Destination Recommender System. WSDM 2023 Workshop on Interactive Recommender System (IRS), Singapore, Mar. 2023 [Paper]