iTour : The Future of Smart Tourism

Smart tourism is an example of the important components of smart cities. However, in many cities, insecurity, safety, fraud and unavailability of proper information about resources are the biggest hurdles towards independent mobility. The tourists’ issues can be overcome by proactive participation of local citizens to help tourists as well as by the cooperation between citizens, city administration and tourists. As a result, a number of components of a smart cities can be strengthened, from the sustainable mobility in tourism development to economy development. It is very challenging as it requires a combination of societal input and advanced smart and effective tools. This article presents viable Internet of Things (IoT) based solution as a framework for tourist independent mobility, called iTour. In the process, this article analyzes the difficulties in initiatives and lessons, exploring possible roles of IoT. I. SMART CITIES AND TOURISM The concept of smart city has evolved with technology centric evolution based on Internet, mobile services, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), smart technologies, and Internet of Things (IoT) [1]–[3]. The key elements of a smart community are the proactive participation of citizens in public life and the ability to create new ways of association between citizens and city administrations. In recent years, many initiatives have been taken with different aims and objectives [4]–[6]. It is envisioned that the integration of advanced tools and technologies and societal engagement that can provide the best opportunity to deal with some of the hurdles. Tourist independent mobility in many countries is a paradigmatic example for a smart city [7]–[9]. Independent mobility of tourists is limited in many countries due to several reasons. Some of the major reasons include: (1) lack of trust in the ongoing tourism services, (2) lack of security support, and (3) fraud prone tourist places. The countries with various physical, religious and social diversities become preferable places to visit for tourists. But due to the above mentioned reasons, tourists limit their travels to such countries. As a result, tourism industries are affected severely. Tourism management plays an important role in making smart city more effective [10]. The proposed iTour has the ability to establish a new era for smart city functioning. This can overcome challenges in the existing tourism management system. Further, iTour involves a large variety of stakeholders including city administrative officials and volunteers. The proposed iTour has been illustrated in Figure 1. Fig. 1. iTour using Internet-of-Things (IoT). II. THE ISSUE OF INDEPENDENT AND SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY OF TOURISTS IN SMART CITIES A key requirement of tourism has been to attract more and more tourists from different parts of the world. However, insecurity, fraud, lack of proper transportation and communication facilities are the major concerns. Moreover, the safety concerns in the tourist places have restricted independent mobility of tourists [11]. Tourism is an important component in the revenue of a country. For example, in India the tourism plays a major role in the economical growth. Directly and indirectly, it provides millions of employments. However, it was recorded that in year 2013, the number of tourist visits in India was less than the tourist visits in cities like Bangkok and London. This may be due to the many reasons such as (as depicted in Figure 2): (1) lack of trust on hotel and travel agencies, (2) lack of support from government the private bodies, (3) insecurity in tourist places, and (iv) unavailability of real time help centers [11]. These things need to be addressed properly in order to attract the tourists. There are lot of concerns for a tourist while visiting to unknown places. It is due to the lack of realistic information, security and other concerns discussed previously.