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Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism

Article  in  International Journal of Virtual Technology and Multimedia · January 2010

DOI: 10.1504/IJVTM.2010.032060

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Int. J. Virtual Technology and Multimedia, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2010 187

Current and future directions of multimedia

technology in tourism

Dimitris N. Kanellopoulos
Department of Tourism Management,
Technological Educational Institute of Patras,
Meg. Alexandrou 1, Patras GR 263 34, Greece
E-mail: d_kan2006@yahoo.gr

Abstract: The future of tourism organisations and enterprises will be

information-oriented, knowledge-driven and much of their daily processes
will be automated around the internet. The internet, including multimedia,
has provided tremendous potential for remote integration and collaboration
in business applications. This paper attempts to provide a review of the
application of multimedia technology in tourism environments. It justifies the
application of multimedia in various tourism sub-domains such as tourism
marketing, tourism education, mobile learning for travellers, mobile tourism
guides, multimedia kiosks, virtual museums, virtual tours, multimedia
travel plans, cooking studios based on web recipes, video conferencing and
modelling demand for space tourism services. A conceptual framework for
the design of multimedia systems for tourism is presented and discussed.
Future research directions are also proposed.

Keywords: multimedia; tourism; multimedia kiosks; multimedia travel plans;

mobile tourism guides; location-aware computing; context-aware computing;
ontologies.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kanellopoulos, D.N.

(2010) ‘Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism’,
Int. J. Virtual Technology and Multimedia, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp.187–206.

Biographical notes: Dimitris N. Kanellopoulos holds a PhD in Multimedia

Communications from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
of the University of Patras, Greece. Currently, he is with the Department of
Tourism Management at the Technological Educational Institute of Patras.
He is also a member of the Educational Software Development Laboratory
(ESDLab) in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Patras.
His research interests include multimedia communications, intelligent
information systems, knowledge representation, web engineering and
web-based education. He has authored many papers in international journals
and conferences at these areas. He serves as a member of the editorial boards
in several academic journals.

1 Introduction

E-tourism is a new research area created by the adoption of Information and

Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the tourism industry (Buhalis and Law, 2008).
ICTs that may be adopted are: electronic commerce, mobile commerce, web services and

Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

188 D.N. Kanellopoulos

web semantics, expert systems and intelligent agents, data mining and data warehousing,
multimedia communications, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), etc.
Nowadays, most of the daily operations of travel enterprises are automated around
the internet, which enables connection to globally distributed resources, personnel and
travellers. The internet provides accurate and specific travel-related information that can
reach the target audience with the accuracy of more personalised information sources.
Multimedia on the internet is becoming one of the key areas of development
that influences tourism (Buhalis and Law, 2008). On the basis of the multimedia
scientific visualisation, tour operators, travel agents, scientists, tourism professionals
and travellers can examine tourism data efficiently with a large degree of comprehension.
Generally, the use of multimedia-enriched web applications in business environment is
considered a necessity for acquiring a competitive advantage in the marketplace
(Gunasekaran and Love, 1999). Essentially, multimedia includes a combination of
multiple types of information such as text, audio, still images, animation, video,
and forms of interactivity content. In a multimedia application, text offers clarity and
self-pacing. Graphics provide visualisation and communicate styles, whereas video
captures the moving events of the world around us. Multimedia technology has been
applied to the tourism industry for various purposes: tourism marketing, tourism
education, personnel training, mobile guiding, web-based virtual museums, web-based
virtual tours, information kiosks, web travel plans, cooking studios based on web recipes,
video conferencing, interaction between executives but also for modelling demand for
radical space tourism services, etc.
Tourism information requires an extensive representation of multimedia data such as
photos and graphics to provide a tangible image or experience to travel planners.
Web applications with multimedia features are particularly useful for dealing
with intangible nature of the tourism service. The most common marketing practices
include the transforming marketing mix variables (promotion, distribution, product and
service, and price) and tangibilising the hotel offerings (using pictures, videos, etc).
Currently, more and more travellers are using tourism multimedia applications such as
mobile tourism guides, information kiosks, virtual museums and web-based tourism
services (Rayman-Bacchus and Molina, 2001). However, no framework has been
proposed to integrate these different types of multimedia applications, while very few
models for multimedia communication systems applied to the tourism industry have been
introduced.
This paper reviews the application of multimedia technology in various sub-domains
of the tourism industry. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework for integrating
tourism multimedia content and services. The proposed framework comprises a generic
model for a multimedia communication system for tourism services. The rest of the paper
is organised as follows. Section 2 presents the relationship between multimedia
and tourism, whereas Section 3 discusses the application of multimedia in tourism.
Section 4 presents a conceptual framework for the design of a multimedia communication
system for tourism. Section 5 discusses future research directions, whereas Section 6
concludes the paper.
 Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism 189

2 Multimedia and tourism

Until now, the application areas of multimedia are too many: entertainment,
communication, business, education, industry, manufacturing, tourism and so on.
In communication, multimedia conferencing describes the combination of audio, video
and data conferencing. The integration of audio, video and data conferencing needs a
number of requirements such as the continuous media synchronisation to be addressed.
Multimedia conferencing needs proper architectures and infrastructures for its
implementation (Agius and Angelides, 1997). Gunasekaran and Love state:
“The technical requirements for implementing distributed multimedia
applications in business are: a fast processor which can handle high volumes
of multimedia data, a high bus bandwidth and efficient input/output based
design and architecture, a multimedia operating system to maintain temporal
and intermedia synchronisation and support real-time scheduling, high capacity
online storage with quick access times and high data transfer rate for effective
interchange of multimedia, high-performance, high bandwidth, low time
transparency networks and protocols for multimedia data transport, and
software development tools for human-computer interfaces and processing
multimedia information.” (Gunasekaran and Love, 1999, p.116)
Progressively, more travel agents are interacting with tourism organisations on a global
basis. For example, the World Tourism Organization (WTO)1 has begun to implement
interactive multimedia networks based on bridging technology aimed at connecting large
tourist companies. More and more travellers use mobile tourism guides, multimedia
kiosks, virtual museums and internet-based tourism services (Rayman-Bacchus and
Molina, 2001). Many computer systems linked to the internet store freely accessible
information, thus allowing people to share, disseminate and receive data and software.
The internet can also be used for direct person-to-person communication through the use
of electronic communication forums. Such ease of access to people, data, software,
documents and multimedia is changing the way in which people search for information,
process personal and business communications, and ultimately, solve business problems.
Internet with current and emerging multimedia features provides plenty opportunities and
is particularly useful for dealing with intangible nature of the service and transforming
marketing mix variables to capitalise on the informational and transactional potential of
the internet.
Multimedia–hypermedia combined with semantic web technologies (e.g., ontologies)
will be the mechanism for integrating tourism information in the future (Kanellopoulos
and Panagopoulos, 2008). The semantic web is an extension of the current web in which
information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work
in cooperation (Berners-Lee et al., 2001). The semantic web argues for a set of
technologies and techniques that integrates Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the core of the
web. In the semantic web, we can create complex applications such as intelligent
browsers, intelligent software agents, global databases with data from the web, etc.
The semantic web provides enhanced information access based on the exploitation of
machine-processable metadata. As we shall discuss in Section 4, the use of semantic web
technologies facilitates the integration of tourism multimedia information not only about
tourism resources or providers but also about available multimedia services. Table 1
presents a summary of the main application of multimedia in tourism.
190 D.N. Kanellopoulos

Table 1 The main application of multimedia in tourism

Tourism sub-systems Application areas

Tourism marketing E-commerce, m-commerce, online ordering, printing and publications
Personnel Tutorial, visualisation of tourism data, VR, virtual tour, virtual
(education and training) museums, travel plans, learning by simulation (e.g., cooking
simulation), training and education, computer-based instruction,
video and compression
Design and creation Modelling demand for radical tourism services (e.g., space tourism
of tourism services), internet, web, semantic web, dynamic packaging, automated
services/products storage and retrieval systems, maintenance of multimedia tourism
databases
Distribution of tourism Multimedia kiosks, Destination Management Systems, mobile tourist
information guides, mobile services for tourism, virtual tours, virtual museums,
travel plans
Administration Videoconferencing, strategic formulation interactive system, printing
(corporate management) and publications, visualisation of tourism data
Traveller’s Context-aware computing, ubiquitous computing, mobile services
(management) for tourism, mobile learning services for travellers, automotive
applications, intelligent wireless web services/applications

3 A review of the multimedia applications in tourism

Hereafter, we review the application of multimedia in different sub-domains of tourism.

3.1 Multimedia marketing applications for tourists

Web-based marketing applications enhance the customer’s awareness of travel products
that are available in the marketplace. Travel marketers using the web can locate target
customers, identify their needs, and communicate with them at a relatively low cost.
Marketers may learn much about their targets from examining personal websites by
means of automated web-crawling tools, usually called ‘web robots’. A successful
destination marketing system is targeted at independent travellers and tourist boards
support it. It incorporates design products by listening to the customers and provides
easy-to-book travel products such as airline tickets, accommodations and cultural events.
Through text-and-data mining tools, Lau et al. (2001) argue that they can use of the
personal information on a traveller’s website and identify his or her interests and needs.
On the basis of such understanding, tourism bureaus can send e-mail messages and offer
service packages especially designed for a potential customer, based on the marketer’s
assessment of the individual’s interests.

3.2 Web-based destination management applications

Multimedia information of a variety of tourism destination products such as
entertainment, event/festival, shopping, activity, accommodation, transportation, food
and beverage is provided on the web. Multimedia presentations of travel products on the
web enhance the user’s awareness of these. Destination Management Systems (DMSs)
provide complete and up-to-date information on a particular tourism destination.
 Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism 191

A DMS is the ICT infrastructure of a Destination Management Organisation (DMO),

used for the collection, storage, manipulation and distribution of tourism multimedia
information, as well as for the transaction of reservations and other commercial activities
(Buhalis, 2003). DMSs are capable of handling both the pre-trip and the post-arrival
information, as well as of integrating availability and booking service too (Kanellopoulos
and Panagopoulos, 2008).

3.3 Multimedia kiosks

Multimedia kiosks support multiple functions including information provision,
interaction between user and consumer supporting the customisation of information,
transactions (such as ticket purchase), and relationship building through loyalty schemes
or other communication opportunities (Slack and Rowley, 2002). Such kiosks manage
information provision/promotion, interaction, transaction and relationships and represent
a shift from ‘task focus’ to ‘customer focus’ in kiosk design. Multimedia kiosks offer a
range of information and services tailored to the ‘customer in context’. A multimedia
kiosk in a tourism centre focuses on tourism-related transactions and information.
This transition to multi-functionality and the creation of a complete support service for
the ‘customer in context’ necessitates strategic collaboration in the provision of the
information and services that can be accessed through the kiosk. In these instances,
responsibility for the management of the kiosk often lies with an infomediary, who
specialises in kiosks, rather than individual retailers or store groups. In the ESPRIT
Multimodal Multimedia Service Kiosk (MASK) project, a prototype kiosk has been
developed with an innovative, user-friendly interface, combining tactile and vocal input
(Lamel et al., 2002).

3.4 Mobile tourism guides for travellers

The most mobile tourism guides are based on the user map-oriented interaction paradigm.
The Context-aware Mobile Personal Assistant (COMPASS) system provides travellers
with context-aware recommendations and services (Van Setten et al., 2004). CRUMPET
is a European Union project aiming at the “CReation of User-friendly Mobile Services
Personalised for Tourism” relying particularly on agent technology (Schmidt-Belz et al.,
2002). The GUIDE system (Cheverst et al., 2002) provides travellers with up-to-date and
context-aware multimedia information about a city via a Personal Digital Assistant
(PDA). On the basis of the closest access point, the client application determines the
approximate location of the tourist and provides him or her with information about sights,
a map, and the possibility of creating a tour. The access points broadcast information
pages in the geographical area of the cell. Tourists on the move frequently access these
information pages. Krösche et al. (2004) developed the mobiDENK application, which
runs on a PDA with an integrated Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. By locating
the user and showing position and path on an interactive map, the mobiDENK offers
visual navigation support. As the user casually tours an area, the mobiDENK provides
location-based multimedia information about Point of Interests (POIs) along the way
such as monuments and significant historical sites. Alfaro et al. (2005) implemented a
multimedia guide on PDA with each destination installed with infrared emitters.
When tourists approach, their PDAs will automatically display a multimedia presentation
of the destination. Console et al. (2003) presented MASTROCARONTE, a system that
192 D.N. Kanellopoulos

provides personalised tourist multimedia information on board a vehicle. Some tour buses
use GPS technology to automatically project tour-guide videos as the bus passes tourist
attractions. Finally, some restaurants use wireless touch screens, so customers can order
as soon as they are ready.

3.5 Multimedia mobile services for travellers

Broadcast information channels frequently filter information requested by travellers.
For example, if many travellers are interested in the latest cultural events, these events
should be scheduled frequently. On the contrary, if a substantially smaller traveller
community is interested in travelling routes, we would expect this to be scheduled for
broadcast at a much lower frequency, utilising less bandwidth but also introducing
increased latencies to obtain up-to-date information. Mobile services depend on node’s
location and include resource discovery mechanisms that make it possible to find local
services (e.g., the nearest DMS services). Follow-me services are also possible.
Phone calls could be routed to the nearest phone, based on the traveller’s current point of
attachment. Some services may migrate as the travellers move. However, this raises
issues of privacy and traveller tracking (and thus security). While tracking traveller’s
location may be desirable from a resource allocation viewpoint, it is possible to have too
much information about the location of travellers. It is compulsory to treat travellers in an
anonymous fashion for anything but the internal processing demands of the network
(Kanellopoulos and Kotsiantis, 2007).

3.6 Web-based virtual museums

A virtual museum is an interactive electronic museum, where the user can move
electronically from room to room and select any exhibit in any room for a more detailed
examination. The exhibits may cover various subjects (e.g., attractions), each in separate
virtual room. New methods for navigating through a pre-rendered three-dimensional (3D)
space and interacting with objects in that space are employed to facilitate interaction with
the museum. The most popular method is virtual navigation, which uses real-time video
decompression for the display of and interaction with high-quality computer animation.
It employs a representation for 3D objects in animated sequences that permits
pixel-accurate, frame-accurate object picking, so that the user can select any 3D object to
trigger movement within the 3D space, examine an exhibit in animated form, or play a
digital movie. An example of a virtual museum in Geosciences courses is presented in
Patterson (1997).

3.7 Visualisation of tourism data

Multimedia data plays an important part in the process of visualisation. Krygier (1999)
identified cartographic multimedia as having great potential for those engaged in attempts
to understand and represent complex human and social environments through space
and time. Maps used for visualisation can provide links to representational media in a
non-linear fashion. An extensive body of literature provides conflicting definitions of,
and required and satisfactory conditions for, VR, virtual worlds and virtual environments.
The integration of multimedia data into Geographical Information Systems (GISs) at all
 Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism 193

levels will substantially increase their effectiveness as analytical tools in the travel
domain.

3.8 Web-based virtual tours

The web allows users to virtually interact with a destination through 3D virtual tours.
A virtual tour is VR simulation of an actually existing location, usually comprising 2D
panoramic images, a sequence of hyperlinked still or video images, or image-based
models of the real location, as well as other multimedia elements such as sound effects,
music, narration and text. Virtual tour viewing evokes an experience of moving
through the represented space. Some virtual tours require the user to travel to the virtual
screening room. The VuPOD2 system comes with a floor plan of the prospective
property and images of all liveable areas, even the ugly ones. The experience within a
computer-mediated environment can simulate real visits, and virtual experience can
provide almost real-life experiences. The 3D interactive websites have been adopted by
online marketers to attract online consumers, encourage online purchases, and to create
loyalty (Fiore et al., 2005). Tourists can get visualised tourism information from digital
maps with aerial and satellite images in 2D and even 3D (Raggam and Almer, 2005).
Users’ interactivity can be further enhanced using multimedia. Abad et al. (2005)
demonstrate how tourist attractions can be presented dynamically by virtual characters
in real time, which is enhanced by the multimedia information about the items stored in a
database. Using the system, visitors can ask for available attractions that correspond
to the selection criteria with ranking based on travellers’ preferences. Interacting
with multimedia-enhanced websites can produce telepresence and allow people to
‘experience’ products and destinations without actually visiting a place.

3.9 Multimedia travel plans

Remarkable progress has been made in the automation of travel planning with the support
of the easy accessibility of information. There are semi-automated commercial service
sites like travelocity.com, expedia.com and orbitz.com (Paprzychi et al., 2002), and
research prototypes of intelligent travel support systems based on software agent
technology (Camacho et al., 2001). Kanellopoulos et al. (2004) introduced the concept of
‘web travel plan’. The elements of a web travel plan are multimedia-based attractions
and accommodations, which are equivalent to physical attractions and accommodations.
Kanellopoulos et al. (2004) designed a novel system that manages semantically enriched
web travel plans. Through their system, web travel plans are more manageable, effective
and adaptive to travellers’ needs. Their system is based on a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network
architecture, and includes a web log analysis module to evaluate how potential travellers
are consuming online web travel plans.

3.10 Multimedia applications for tourism education

In investigating the impact of multimedia for teaching tourism and hospitality students,
Sigala et al. (2001) provided positive evidence of the efficiency and effectiveness of
multimedia-based instruction. Tourism and hospitality education based on the web and
distributed multimedia technologies overcome geographic and time barriers, strained
budgets and overlapping schedule conflicts. Learners can progress and comfort level,
194 D.N. Kanellopoulos

while courses can be taken from any location and at any user-defined time with
consistency of instruction, content and delivery methodology. What is more, the use of
internet in tourism and hospitality instruction may incorporate modules and courses
that allow educators to control and monitor both the learners and their progress.

3.11 Cooking studios based on web recipes

Foods and beverage is a sub-sector of the tourism industry. There are a few multimedia
applications that simulate the stages of cooking visually according to various cooking
scenarios. Such applications generate a scenario, schedule a cooking procedure, and
simulate of cooking dishes that a user has selected. The condition of the cooking process
is displayed using texts, figures, movies and time charts. Cooking scenarios are usually
generated from web recipes based on a cooking schema, which is a format for
fundamental elements such as: description of a dish, ingredients and instructions. In the
system proposed by Takano and Ueshima (2004), a cooking scenario is generated, as it is
defined in terms of XML such as to express specifically cooking process. Their system
collects recipes from the web and analyses them morphologically and semantically.

3.12 Mobile learning services for travellers

Boundaries between services and learning are diminishing, as specific and accurate
knowledge is increasingly needed for short-term purposes and the provision of
information and learning material is more and more considered a service (Dye et al.,
2003). Mobile learning devices allow for accurate and instant learning items (info) on
site, whether the traveller is interested in learning more about the museum or the city
he or she is about to visit, the mountain he or she is about to climb or the historic roots
and geographic or linguistic peculiarities of the country he or she is about to traverse.
In this respect, mobile learning offers more than just providing an electronic travel guide.
In tourism, knowledge and learning are highly estimated while the technical equipment
such as PDAs, GPRS3 standards on mobile phones or wireless internet access is widely
distributed. In such environment, mobile learning services for travellers provide an
opportunity to deliver unique services.

3.13 Intelligent wireless web: Context-aware computing for the traveller

Alesso and Smith define Intelligent Wireless Web (IWW) as a
“… network that provides anytime, anywhere access to information resources
with efficient user interfaces and applications that learn and thereby provide
increasingly useful services whenever and wherever needed.” (Alesso and
Smith, 2001)
IWW aims to integrate the ever-increasing intelligence in the environment of the
traveller. The key feature of the IWW is the separation of data from presentation and
applications. This separation allows the reuse of the existing desktop ICT infrastructure
for service delivery to both wired and wireless users (Kanellopoulos and Kotsiantis,
2006). Context-aware computing plays an instrumental role in realisation of the vision of
the IWW by allowing travel applications to better understand user’s context and adapt
services to the interpreted context, thereby ensuring that the busy traveller gets highly
 Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism 195

specific data and services. Context-aware computing is the use of environmental

characteristics such as the user’s location, time, profile, identity and activity to inform
the computing device so that it may provide information to the user that is relevant to the
current context. In a context-aware computing system, user’s interaction with the system
can be reduced by using context as a filtering mechanism to put context-relevant
information to the users. This has the potential to increase the usability by decreasing
the level of interaction required between the mobile devices and the end-users.
The emergence of complementary technologies such as ubiquitous computing, user
profiling, and sensor networking enables the capture of many other context parameters.
The application of context awareness has been demonstrated in a large number of tourism
applications (Laukkanen et al., 2002), museums (Fleck et al., 2002) and route planning
(Marmasse and Schmandt, 2002). For example, the Ambience4 project focuses on
creating a digital environment that is aware of a person’s presence, context, and
sensitivity and responds accordingly.

3.14 Ubiquitous computing applications

Ubiquitous computing is an emerging paradigm of personal computing, characterised
by the shift from the dedicated computing machinery to pervasive computing capabilities
embedded in our everyday environments (Weiser, 2003). Realisation of the vision
of the ubiquitous computing has become possible because of the advances in different
technologies including: sensors, wireless and wired communications, memory, processor
architectures, software technologies and communication systems such as mobile phones,
internet and the web. Recently, several projects have focused on ubiquitous computing.
These projects include IBM’s pervasive computing,5 Xerox PARC’s ubiquitous
computing6 and the MIT’s Oxygen7 initiative. Ubiquitous computing technologies can
play a key role by bridging the gap between the physical world of travel operations and
the virtual world enabled by the ICT infrastructure. Although many tourism collaboration
applications make extensive use of virtual project environments, in reality, a significant
working time of the traveller is spent on activities in the physical environment.
Ubiquitous computing technologies have the potential to make collaborative processes
and services sensitive to the data available in the physical world.

3.15 Video-conferencing applications

Travellers can use video-conferencing applications to share travel experiences. Such
applications can transform and re-engineer business processes. According to Agius and
Angelides (1997), video conferencing comes in two main varieties:
1 store-and-forward video mail
2 real-time video conferencing.
Store-and-forward video mail allows participants to send and receive asynchronously
multimedia-enhanced electronic mail. Such applications are typically built on standard
multimedia messaging infrastructures so that they may be incorporated into other
applications. Although video mail is non-interactive, it still requires considerable
processing power for sending the messages and plenty hard disk space for storing them.
Real-time video conferencing is less demanding on the host, because the video passes
196 D.N. Kanellopoulos

through the machine without holding up the processor or system bus, and there is rarely
any need to save it to disk.

3.16 Applications modelling demand for space tourism services

Space tourism provides new radical services (Crouch et al., 2009). The problem of
modelling demand for radically new services, technologies, and products has much
in common with non-market traded goods because they do not exist, and typically will
not exist for some time. Therefore, one cannot expect samples of consumers to know
about or have experience with the offerings. So, lack of knowledge or experience pose
challenges for researchers. One solution involves Acceleration of Information Methods
(AIMs) (Urban et al., 1997). AIMs rely on multimedia and other technologies and can
simulate the processes by which tourists become aware of space tourism products and
services, search for and acquire information about benefits or problem solutions, decide
whether to consider them and whether they can take advantage of what they offer, decide
if they want to buy a product now available, or wait to see how the product market
develops and evolves over time. Information Acceleration (IA) uses information and
multimedia technology to ‘accelerate’ consumer learning and experience, enabling one to
develop and implement Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) surveys that include a wide
array of information, features, risk/benefits and contexts that consumers need to
understand and experience to make informed decisions about future services.
Coltman et al. (2004) discuss case study applications involving voice-activated
interactive PDAs, advanced commercial websites and new forms of space tourism.
In particular, they discuss designing and implementing AIMs quickly and easily by
automating as much of the process available.

4 A framework for the design of multimedia systems in tourism

In this section, we provide a conceptual framework and propose guidelines for the design
of a multimedia communication system for tourism. Figure 1 demonstrates the role of
semantic annotation on multimedia content as an integrating mechanism for the various
tourism sub-systems identified in Table 1. In the tourism context, multimedia annotation
can improve the integration between functional multimedia sub-systems (as indicated in
Figure 1) by effective and efficient information flow between functional sub-systems.
Improved information flow using multimedia will enhance employees’ ability to
understand a tourism business’s mission, and business’s strategies.
In the semantic web, such integration can be achieved by semantic annotation of
tourism multimedia content. Semantic annotation is the process of inserting tags in
web resources to assign semantics. Actually, the semantic web provides tools for explicit
markup of web content and it is based on a set of languages such as the Resource
Description Framework (RDF), DAML + OIL and Web Ontology Language (OWL).
These languages can be used to annotate web content, while they have well-defined
semantics and inferential procedures that let software agents draw inferences from the
languages’ statements.
There are many semantic annotation approaches that can be categorised according
to the degree of automation of annotation tasks, and the type of web resources that can be
annotated, etc. Semantic annotation approaches have been proposed for the annotation
 Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism 197

of images (Wielemaker et al., 2003), audio (Cano and Koppenberger, 2004) and video
(Bloehdorn et al., 2005). The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has started a
Multimedia Annotation on the Semantic Web Task Force8 as part of the Semantic Web
Best Practices and Deployment Working Group (Stamou et al., 2006). One goal is to
provide guidelines for using semantic web languages and technologies to create, store,
manipulate, interchange and process image metadata. Another is to study interoperability
issues between multimedia annotation standardisation frameworks (such as MPEG-7,9
Dublin Core10 and VRA11) and RDF-and OWL-based approaches.

Figure 1 The multimedia industry in tourism: application touch point wheel (see online version
for colours)

Generally, ontologies constitute the main element of the semantic web and provide
conceptual models for interpreting the information provided by webpages
(Chandrasekaran et al., 1999). For example, an ontology of the travel domain might
contain concepts such as a ‘tourist destination’ and ‘means of transportation’ and
relationships between these terms. Computational processes and intelligent software
agents interpret semantic content and derive consequences from the information they
collect. Semantic annotation of tourism multimedia content enables the deployment
of intelligent tourism applications that could reason over multimedia metadata.
For example, using the semantic markup for the ‘Official Travel’s’ webpage reporting
travel characteristics, an intelligent software agent could learn that the current tourism
destination is ‘Paris’. The agent might further learn that from the “Official Destination
Board of Paris” website’s semantic markup that all travels to Paris are obtained using the
‘British Airways’ airlines. Combining the two pieces of information, the intelligent agent
could infer that this travel to Paris will be achieved using the ‘British Airways’ airlines.
198 D.N. Kanellopoulos

Now let us consider an example. In the post-purchase experience (Figure 1) when

tourists return from a tour, they like to have a reminder of the trip and share their travel
experiences. Therefore, automatic tracing of the tour and composition of tour summaries
are desired. The “visualisation of tourism data” component could be responsible for this
task using an intelligent agent for this purpose. The travel-related information,
used during the previous stage (i.e., purchase experience), can be searched and
exploited effectively, if the travel-related multimedia content is semantics – annotated
(Kanellopoulos and Panagopoulos, 2008). If this is in force, semantic querying is possible
and intelligent agents can automatically process travel-related multimedia metadata.
From another perspective, semantics would enable the integration of various semantic
web services for tourism (Paolucci and Sycara, 2003). If we introduce semantics to web
services, this will bring the following advantages:
1 semantically enriched tourism web services will handle the interoperability
at the technical level; that is, they will make multimedia communication applications
for tourism to talk to each other independent of the hardware and software platform
2 semantics will be used also for the discovery and composition of tourism
web services.

4.1 Requirements of tourism multimedia services

Considering the characteristics of a multimedia communication system together with the
structure of the processes executed in the tourism environment, a set of requirements
for the successful application of multimedia communication services in tourism can be
produced:

4.1.1 Requirements at the user level

• The tourism-related functions must be incorporated in the multimedia
communication services
• Effective generation and presentation of the different information types
of interest, paying attention to the capabilities of available terminals and services
• Dynamic control of applications with regard to connections, interactions, and quality
on demand combined with user-friendly and transparent human/machine interfaces
• Intelligent support of users examining their individual propensities
• Encouragement of collaboration between the users of the system.

4.1.2 Infrastructure requirements

• Network infrastructure characterised by high-speed performance and flexibility
• Several virtual connections over the same access (including flexible/dynamic
channel allocation)
• Multiple concurrent users, participating in more than one concurrent
multimedia sessions
 Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism 199

• Synchronisation of continuous media types (e.g., audio, video)

• Various service qualities like Quality of Service (QoS)
• Support for all media types
• Seamless integration, unrestricted by time or space
• Real-time information storage and retrieval.

4.2 The proposed framework

Tourism-related processes have a dynamic character, and thus it is a difficult task to
design and implement an effective and efficient multimedia communication system
proper for various tourism-related processes. The proposed framework comprises a
generic model for a tourism multimedia communication system (Figure 2). The generic
model follows the layered paradigm, and is built up according to the discussed
requirements. For each layer, its constituent elements are identified and discussed.
The constituent elements of the layers are replaced by specific solutions offered by
current or state-of-the-art technology, which are able to satisfy the requirements.

Figure 2 The proposed model of a multimedia communication system for tourism

4.2.1 The infrastructure layer

End-computing infrastructure: Great processing power is required to implement codecs,
multimedia file systems and corresponding file formats, and to allow high-speed data
compression. In addition, the data-intensive nature of media types such as digital video
200 D.N. Kanellopoulos

and audio requires large volumes of storage capacity and sufficient data transfer
bandwidth. Therefore, the use of a multimedia system based on a powerful RISC
processor with fast main memory, high bus bandwidth and efficient I/O is proposed.
Fast, high capacity hard drives, RAID systems and optical storage devices are considered
to be the most important suitable storage technologies. A computer system suitable for
multimedia applications must also be able to support the effective input and output of the
various information types.
Network infrastructure: Multimedia applications for tourism-related processes require
usually a broadband network infrastructure because in such applications bandwidth
limitations cannot be ignored, mainly those referring to video quality. Concerning
reliability, most multimedia applications can tolerate errors in transmission due to
corruption or packet loss without retransmission or correction. In some cases,
to meet real-time delivery requirements or to achieve synchronisation, some packets are
even discarded. Additionally, multimedia networks must provide the low latency required
for interactive operation, and must be able to support multipoint communication,
as opposed to traditional point-to-point communication. Techniques such as SDH and
ATM allow voice, data, and video traffic to be transported easily over the same network
at a variety of speeds. For the internet, the use of the IPv6 protocol is considered
to be necessary. To build this infrastructure, fibre optics are needed as an enabler,
in combination with the use of the SONET standard. For the future, we propose the use of
the technology of Passive Optical Networks (PONs), which will enable both-way
broadband delivery capabilities down to the user (traveller). The evolution of this
technology will eventually result in the deployment of fibre optics in the local loop Fibre
In The Loop (FITL) and to All Optical Networks (AONs). Wireless technologies based
on TDMA and CDMA are also under evaluation for use in the local loop or for
interfacing with Personal Communication Networks and Systems (PCNs or PCSs).

4.2.2 Distributed processing layer

The main element of the distributed processing layer is the operating system, which
provides an easy environment for the execution of tourism multimedia applications,
and ensures the effective use of the infrastructure. The operating system offers various
services related to essential resources, such as the network, CPU, main memory, storage,
and all input and output devices. However, a multimedia communication system requires
additional services from the operating system. Such services are:
• Support for new data types
• Compression and decompression functionalities for video
• Unified media input and output control
• Priority control (pre-emptive scheduling)
• Inter-media synchronisation
• Graphical User Interface (GUI) with voice and video
• Application Programming Interface (API), which keeps physical, input
and output transparent
 Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism 201

• Standard multimedia format and protocol

• High-speed communication control
• Distributed file system, e.g., Network File System (NFS)
• Distributed object management
• Remote database access
• Distributed transaction processing for database applications
• Global directory (name/address) management for assuring wide area
distribution transparency.
These services can be provided by a multitasking/multithreading operating system,
which is based on the principles of object-oriented design and client/server architecture.
Current operating systems incorporate the above-mentioned additional services, either as
device driver, or as extensions based on the existing operating system structure.

4.2.3 Groupware layer

In the tourism industry, travel agents and tourism business professionals can be
considered as a group, because they communicate directly and have some or all of the
following characteristics: communication, identification, long life and motivation.
Documents, text, video, etc., needed for collaboration is exchanged and shared between
all the members of the group. Thus, the members of the group can see and process
the same-shared information. Consequently, cross-disciplinary work such as discussions,
suggestions, or joint creation of documents is possible. Groupware can facilitate such
interactions. In our model, we propose the use of a groupware platform, which utilises the
hypermedia concept and includes suitable CSCW tools, an Electronic Document System
(EDS), using either the Document Image Processing (DIP) technology, or the Text
Management & Retrieval (TM&R) technology (or even a combination of these two), and
the World Wide Web (WWW, W3) tool, for the interconnection of HTML hypermedia
information objects (pages). The suggested CSCW tools are object-orientated,
user-friendly software development tools for tourism multimedia applications
(authoring systems), tools for retrieval and data management, which are important for
large, heterogeneous, networked, and distributed multimedia systems, aids for navigation
through hypermedia information (context-dependent searching, object and pattern
recognition), and tools for the coordination of cooperative teleworking (management of
documents, actions, authorisations, etc.). Intelligent user agents are key modules of the
groupware platform and guide the user in a variety of operations, hiding from him, as far
as possible, the telecommunication and information storage and processing technologies.
A user agent exercises only local control and must cooperate with system agents
responsible for global control (e.g., system management, directories, message handling).
The agent technology can be combined with VR to offer VR group applications
(e.g., virtual travel plans), where individuals directly interact and collaborate within a
simulated world. In the web, new technologies such as Virtual Reality Modelling
Language (VRML) and the Java language are towards this direction.
202 D.N. Kanellopoulos

4.2.4 Application layer

The application layer determines the practical value of the proposed model. The main
elements of this layer are the user interface, the application structure and the information
content. Distributed tourism multimedia applications are proposed to
• Provide intelligent support to users with the use of suitable system error and
information messages and help services (context-sensitive and real-time help).
• Provide a friendly and consistent GUI designed according to strict ergonomic
criteria. Such a GUI has to present the information in comprehensible formats.
• Allow interaction with structured, objective knowledge in a way that enables
the user to absorb concepts and develop schemata, derive an understanding of their
use and test that understanding by appropriate investigations and exercises.
• Support learning on both an individual and a group basis.
• Allow not only the users great flexibility in finding their way through the knowledge,
which is made available to them, but also an instructor to monitor and,
if necessary, direct the progress of each individual student.
• Facilitate the user to build representations and models, analyse, browse, search,
compare and evaluate, reason and hypothesise, synthesise, manipulate and modify,
experiment, catalogue, store, and retrieve.
• Consider possible hardware limitations of the user.
• Annotate multimedia tourism content using proper tools.

5 Future research

In this section, we recommend some future research directions that would improve
integration based on multimedia.
• Semantic annotation of tourism multimedia content would enable the deployment
of intelligent tourism multimedia applications that could reason over multimedia
metadata. By merging and aligning existing good practices in multimedia industry
with current technological advances of the semantic web would give metadata
providers immediate payoff because they could directly benefit from publicly
available semantic web software.
• Multimedia can be used for modelling demand for radically new tourism services.
AIMs can simulate the processes by which tourists become aware of radical tourism
services (e.g., space tourism services), products and technologies. IA can use
information and multimedia technology to ‘accelerate’ traveller learning and
experience to make informed decision about radical tourism services.
• Tourism multimedia communication systems should be designed such as to be
multimodal, proactive, and easily accessible outside the desktop to a wide range
of users.
 Current and future directions of multimedia technology in tourism 203

• A multimodal system responds to inputs in more than one modality

or communication channel (e.g., speech, gesture, writing, and others).
The interaction with a tourism multimedia collection (e.g., a museum selection)
depends on how the collection is indexed. Therefore, multimodal interaction
techniques constitute a future research challenge.
• A proactive multimedia system understands cultural and social contexts
and responds accordingly. Tourism multimedia system should use cultural cues
during interaction and during analysis. The cultural differences in semantic
tourism content span every level of multimedia content pyramid from
low-level features (e.g., colours used) to high-level semantics (e.g., different
communication styles between users of various nationalities). Therefore,
we must develop culture-specific automatic analysis techniques.
• We can create and access tourism multimedia content using mobile systems
(e.g., 3G mobile phones) or non-mobile systems. However, the future
of tourism multimedia applications lies outside the desktop, and semantic
annotation on multimedia content will become the main access mechanism
to tourism information and services across the envisaged semantic web.
• We should focus research efforts on the integration of multiple sensors and media
having the tourist as the starting point.
• We should also consider the social, economic and cultural context in which
multimedia technology for tourism purposes might be deployed. For example,
we have to consider the social, economic and cultural implications of ubiquitous
computing applied to the travel industry.
• Finally, we must create new interdisciplinary academic programmes to tackle the
issues discussed and involve researchers across disciplines.

6 Conclusions

In this paper, we reviewed the applications of multimedia technology in tourism.

We proposed a conceptual framework for improving the information flow
(communication) between the various functional multimedia sub-systems in tourism.
Improved information flow can be achieved by semantically annotating the tourism
multimedia content using ontology tools. Semantic annotation on multimedia data can be
used for integrating and searching semantically tourism multimedia content. Semantic
annotation of tourism multimedia content enables the deployment of intelligent tourism
applications that could reason over multimedia metadata. By this way, the proposed
framework improves the integration of these sub-systems and brings users (e.g.,
personnel, tourists) and various elements of multimedia sub-systems together. Therefore,
the framework improves productivity and quality. Important benefits can be achieved,
if multimedia is used effectively. For example, an interactive multimedia application can
reduce the lead-time for transferring information and thus to improve the effectiveness of
a tourism service. The proposed framework comprises a generic model for a multimedia
communication system for tourism. The generic model follows the layered paradigm, and
is built up according to the specific requirements imposed by tourism-related processes.
204 D.N. Kanellopoulos

Multimedia can also support new tourism environments such as virtual tours and
modelling demand for radical tourism services (e.g., space tourism services). However,
production and delivery systems of multimedia content and services in support of tourism
have to be coherently developed, and bring to maturity on the delivery mechanisms.

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Notes
1
World Tourism Organization: http://www.unwto.org/index.php
2
The VuPOD system: http://www.vupods.com/
3
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). It is a packet-oriented mobile data service available to
users of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and IS-136 mobile phones.
4
The Ambience project: http://www.extra.research.philips.com/euprojects/ambience/
5
The IBM’s pervasive computing: http://www.research.ibm.com/thinkresearch/pervasive.shtml
6
Xerox PARC’s ubiquitous computing: http://www.parc.com/about/default.html
7
MIT’s Oxygen initiative: http://oxygen.lcs.mit.edu/Overview.html
8
W3C. The Multimedia Annotation on the Semantic Web Task Force: http://www.w3.
org/2001/sw/BestPractices/MM/
9
ISO/IEC, “Overview of the MPEG-7 Standard; Version 6.0” ISO/IECJTC1/SC29/WG11/N4980,
2001. The MPEG-7 describes the multimedia content data that supports some degree of
interpretation of the information meaning.
10
Dublin Core Community, “Dublin Core ElementSet, Version 1.1”, 2003, ISO Standard 15836
2003, 2003; http://www.niso.org/international/SC4/n515.pdf. It provides a small set of descriptors
that quickly drew global interest from various information providers in the arts, sciences,
education, business and government sectors.
11
Virtual Resource Association, VRA Core 3.0; http://www.vraweb.org/vracore3.htm. VRA Core
3.0 consists of a single element set that can be applied as many times required to create records
to describe works of visual culture and the images that document them.

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