Intelligent system applications in electronic tourism

Recent changes in tourists' behavior and the growing importance of Information and Communication Technologies mean that much more attention needs to be given to electronic (e)-tourism. With the Internet becoming the preferred media choice for many travelers to obtain travel information, online travel agencies and their offers are gaining more importance all over the world, also in Turkey. Turkish travel web sites usually provide static information which can be accessed by some kind of search forms, but users need more such as recommendation tools, trip planners which include a Decision Support System inside. For this reason, this paper offers a new approach to the marketing strategies for Turkish travel agencies, but the recommendation tool is also a generic model for all tourism agencies in the world. An intelligent system which works as a recommendation tool for trip planning is created by using Case based reasoning algorithm. The inspiration module of the proposed model recommends users the most available trip alternatives by comparing the older cases with the new client. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.