BT Personalization and Visualization in a Web-based Destination Management Application

The domain of travel and tourism is complex for recommender systems, because the items to be recommended, e.g. travel destinations, have many facets. In previous work, we have developed DestiRec, a Web-based solution for destination recommendation [1]. The application allows for interactive specification of preferences (e.g. travel month, activities) and adapts recommended travel regions instantly on a map. The goal of this Bachelor’s Thesis project is not to focus on the recommendation algorithm, but to further develop this application and investigate the personalization and visualization of the different facets of the domain (travel destinations). 

Ideas include user management and personalization functions such as storing watchlists and favorite regions, creating preferences and already visited regions, and handling sets of destinations for future travel planning. Examples of visualizations are bold borders to mark visited regions, colors to indicate whether a region is good for travel for a specified month, or labels and markers of different forms to highlight specific features. The procedure is to develop user interface features and visualization options for the existing application and test the different variants in a user study.

The application was developed with the open-source JavaScript library ReactJS, so good programming skills in ReactJS or related frameworks are a prerequisite for this project. Please send your application (brief CV, transcript of records and short motivation statement including ReactJS experience) to Wolfgang Wörndl (woerndl(at)cit.tum.de) until March 16th. (Decision and possible start soon after this date.)

[1] Asal Nesar Noubari, Wolfgang Wörndl: Dynamic Adaptation of User Preferences and Results in a Destination Recommender System. WSDM 2023 Workshop on Interactive Recommender System (IRS), Singapore, Mar. 2023 [Paper]