Tourism Recommender Systems as a Vehicle for Social and Cultural Inclusion

Recommender systems for tourism have become so popular that our smart phones are now full of applications that can suggest customized itineraries anywhere and anytime. Most of them, however, recommend similar itineraries, usually even in the same overcrowded areas. In this article, we present the concept of an integrated framework for cultural tourism with different characteristics. Such a framework can propose alternative customized itineraries to favor cultural and social inclusion of visitors with local residents, for example, in urban suburbs or agricultural and industrial regions. Therefore, the system has to provide user interfaces to enable organizations, local enterprises, and visitors to analyze and exploit rich open data sources. In this way, local institutions could better plan and handle cultural tourism and public resources. Small businesses could cost-effectively promote their services. Visitors could receive personalized routes with knowledge related to local communities, cultures, traditions, and others. © 2021