The Tetherless Tourist: Ambient Intelligence in Travel & Tourism

Mobile services find in travel and tourism a challenging arena for application exploitation, which can greatly benefit from the convergent impact of a number of enabling technologies referred to as ambient intelligence. Fulfilling the specific needs of tourists, travelers, and citizens on the move calls for appropriate paradigms to be implemented in key functions like user interfaces, display systems, interaction with information-rich contents, and information retrieval. This article briefly addresses the state-of-the-art and emerging technology environment and introduces appropriate user profiles, representative of various operational situations. As a result, a comprehensive vision of mobile services in travel and tourism is offered, with particular reference to cultural tourism.