A framework for computer-assisted travel counseling

This paper presents a suggested organizational framework for important design issues related to computer-assisted travel counseling (CATC). It presents an alternative methodological approach to the implementation of a counseling system which addresses several issues that have received little attention in the literature. The approach demonstrated is based upon multiple criteria decision-making methodologies. Mathematical formulations for problems related to package trip selection are presented, and solution performance is demonstrated in a prototype decision support system. The results indicate that this approach provides improvements in both performance and extensibility over the CATC systems hitherto described in the literature. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.