supported by “the Fundamental Research Funds for the

Central Universities”

TOURISM INFORMAITION SYSTEM FOR INDEPENDENT

TRAVELLERS — BASED ON INFORMATION REQUIREMENT

Ping Yin and Lintao Chen

Department of Tourism Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, China

Keywords: Tourism information system, Independent travellers, Information requirement.

Abstract: In the last twenty years in China, people’s leisure time increased quickly, and tourism facilities and service

quality were improved steadily. What’s different with the former tourism development is Independent

Travelling has been the major style and possibly will take the place of the Group Travelling. Independent

Travellers have different tourism demands, and tourism information is the most important factor within

tourists’ decision making program. On the basic of tourist information collection through a questionnaire,

this paper analyzed the Independent Travellers’ information demands and designed an information system

for independent travellers.

1 INTRODUCTION

Independent travelling plays an increasingly large

share of the tourism market. This kind of travel, with

free and strong character, could easily gain an

outstanding travel experience. However, it always

turns to be rough because of retardation and

translucent of our domestic tourism information.

Therefore, Tourism Information System for

Independent Travellers which possessing

navigational and self-help function is necessary. The

system can not only redound to tourism industry

informationizing, but also offer the effective support

for the independent travellers.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Domestic scholars have already done relatively

researches on the establishment of the tourism

information system. Chen Jing’s (2002) researched

tourism information system of Fujian province. He

put functions such as management, space control

and analyze, multimedia, and decision-making

support into practice. Yang Chunyu (2002) indicated

that local tourism information system should be

consisted of basal tourism information system data

base, basal tourism service data base, native status

data base, basal geographic data base, and Web

station data base which was based on internet. Zhou

Xinwei, Wang Fusheng, Wang Ying (2005) made

use of MapObjects to develop a tourism information

system for Beijing. The system accomplished the

integration of fundamental geographical feature of

special field information and tourism specialized

information, which included information

acquirement and tourism planning. They provided

the all-direction tour information service dyadic,

taking electron map as information owing to the

network. Zhou Xinwei, Gong Huili, Zhao Wenji,

Yu Mengliang, Wang Ying, Yang Lingli (2006)

exploited Beijing tourism information system, which

realized the functions of the artwork displaying , the

data acquirement, valuation.

However, the development of the tourist’s

information system basic especially for Independent

Travellers is still blank in present researches.

Therefore, this paper tries to focus on exploiting a

tourism information system for the special tourists.

3 METHODOLOGY

Based on the construction flow of the geographic

information system (GIS), this paper develops the

system construction from such dimension: the user's

needs the system designing and the details

designing, the system implementation and the

380

Yin P. and Chen L..

TOURISM INFORMAITION SYSTEM FOR INDEPENDENT TRAVELLERS — BASED ON INFORMATION REQUIREMENT.

DOI: 10.5220/0003489503800383

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2011), pages 380-383

ISBN: 978-989-8425-55-3

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

maintenance research.

The third part of this article summarizes analyzes

the special information requirement of Independent

Travellers by a questionnaire. The fourth part builds

up an information system from User determination,

System disposition, Data base designing, System

function, funds and management; and the fifth part is

the conclusion.

4 INDEPENDENT TRAVELLERS

INFORMATION DEMAND

4.1 Information Survey

4.1.1 The Basic Information of Survey

In order to analysis the Independent Travellers’

demand of software and hardware in traveling

process, we design a “Independent Travellers

demand questionnaire” and carried out on-site at

three famous tourism attractions in Beijing including

the Forbidden City, Heaven Temple and Shicha Hai

Park during January, 2008.

The survey, which contained 22 questions, was

made available in Chinese. The information was

gathered from 200 tourists. The survey was

conducted using a face-to-face survey method level

and obtained a response rate of approximately

95.5%, which means that there were 191 effective

questionnaires.

The respondents were selected randomly.

Besides the multiple choice, there was an open

ended section for the respondents to choose and

write down their suggestion for the development of

independent travel industry.

4.1.2 Sample Characters

Table 1 indicates the basic information of the

respondents in this survey.

4.2 Analysis of Independent

Travellers’ Information

Requirement

“Drive tourist demand questionnaire” has 22

questions, of which 21 are enclosed option

questions, and the other is open style. Through these

answers of the questionnaire, we can achieve the

primarily information of the Independent travellers’

demand, and offer information basement for the

design of information system.

Table 1: Sample character analysis.

demographics respondents Percent (%)

Sex

Male 95 54

Female 81 46

Age

16-20 12 6.9

21-25 46 25.6

26-30 57 32.3

31-40 39 22.1

41-50 19 10.8

>51 4 2.3

Educational

level

Associate degree 7 3.9

College diploma 41 23.3

Bachelor degree 78 44.4

Master degree 35 19.9

Doctor degree 15 8.5

career

clerk 86 48.9

Technologist 11 6.4

businessman 14 7.9

Official 29 16.3

student 36 20.5

Income per

month

<3000 49 27.9

3001-6000 57 32.3

6001-10000 42 23.9

10001-20000 19 10.8

>20000 9 5.1

4.2.1 Information Demanded by

Independent Travellers

It can be inferred that independent travellers are

eager to know five kinds of information, which are

tourism attraction information, transportation

information, geographical information, social

service information, and lodging information. The

five kinds of information can be segmented to 12

information. Table 2 gives the evidence.

Table 2: Information demand of the independent travelers.

Kinds of information Information segment

tourism attraction information

Tourism attractions

Recreation spots

transportation information

External transportation

Internal transportation

geographical information

Location of destination

Climate of destination

social service information

Communication service

Medical service

Security service

Language service

lodging information

Star-level hotels information

Other hotels information

4.2.2 Importance Order of the Information

In the survey, the respondents are asked to mark the

information they required, and the highest mark is 5,

the lowest is 1. The average value for every

information required by the respondents is shown in

Table 3.

TOURISM INFORMAITION SYSTEM FOR INDEPENDENT TRAVELLERS — BASED ON INFORMATION

REQUIREMENT

381

Table 3: Inportance of the information.

Information segment mark rank

Tourism attractions 4.11 4

Recreation spots 2.45 11

External transportation 4.21 3

Internal transportation 4.08 5

Location of destination 3.68 6

Climate of destination 4.23 2

Communication service 3.39 7

Medical service 3.21 9

Security service 4.47 1

Language service 2.97 10

Star-level hotels information 2.28 12

Other hotels information 3.37 8

Therefore, when system designing, we must pay

more attention to the information of drive-tourists

demands to guarantee the information practical and

comprehensive.

4.3 Conclusion

According to the diagnosis results presented above,

we can orient the tourism information system for

independent travellers as following: to satisfy the

independent travellers main demands in their

journeys, such as tourism attraction information,

transportation information, geographical

information, social service information, and lodging

information.

5 TOURISM INFORMATION

SYSTEM FOR INDEPENDENT

TRAVELLERS

ESTABLISHMENT

5.1 System Users and Information

Requirement

“Tourism Information System for Independent

Travellers(TISIT)” is a system mainly facing the

independent travellers; simultaneously it also can be

applied to Government’s area development

planning, tourist business's development planning,

and various social organizations’ activities planning.

Different users have different information demand,

as shown in figure 1.



System

Consumer

Application

service

Trave-

ling

mana-

gement

and

plan

depar-

ment

Allthe

tourists

indepe‐

dent

trave‐

llers

Tourism

business

Manage

the

informa-

tion &

provide

plan

sugges-

tion

Inquiry

the

tour

infor‐

mation

Inquiry

tour

informa-

tion,

choose

travel

plan

Upload

enterprise

information,

obtains the

user

appraisal

Software

platformuser

WebGIS

builder

First

level

tech

perso‐

nnel

Data

deliver

person

Com-

plete

sys-

tem’s

network

Carry on

the

system

design

for

tourists

Gain the

uploa-

ding

informa-

tion

Figure 1: System users and information demand.

5.2 System Comprehensive Structure

Design

Based on system users’ demand and system objects,

this system is constituted by management

subsystem, database subsystem, inquiry subsystem,

analysis and appraisal subsystem, and output

subsystem. The comprehensive structure designing

is shown by Fig 2.

6 CONCLUSIONS

This paper has analyzed the theory and the practice

research in Tourism Information Systems for

Independent Travellers (TISIT). In system analysis

part, the authors use innovatively many kinds of

network methods to draw a conclusion about the

information demand by independent travellers.

Based on the demand results, this article has

analyzed the comprehensive system designing, the

detailed system designing and the concrete

implementation, and has obtained the essential

method and the practical application function of

Tourism Information Systems for Independent

Travellers (TISIT).

Realizing the system function which states above,

the TISIT can satisfy various part of users’ needs.

Compared with traditional guidance system or other

ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

382



Analysesand

appraisalsubsystem

Outputsubsystem

Display

information



Cartography

output



Discoutput

Inquiry

subsystem

Trans‐

porta‐

tion

infor‐

mation



Geo‐

graphi‐

cal

infor‐

mation

Social

service

infor‐

matio

Lod‐

ging

infor‐

mation

Tourism

attract‐

tion

infor‐

mation

Management

subsystem

Maps

Special

data



Image,

video,

audio

TISIT

Database

subsystem

Spatial

databas

Special

database

Image,

video,

audio

data‐

bases



Tourism

market

analysis

Tou‐

rism

trans‐

porta‐

tion、

tourism

facility

Tou‐

rism

attar‐

ction

and

facilit

Tourism

plan

Figure 2: System structure (Subsystem constitution).

general traveling geographic information system, the

TISIT has the obvious superiority.

6.1 Defects

With the limitation of software and hardware

condition, the authors haven’t taken deeper research

in programming to realize the TISIT. As

development of database is obviously a huge project,

the research in the system data base development is

needed.

REFERENCES

Bing Pan, Daniel R Fesenmaie., 2006. Online Information

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Research, 2006, 33(3):809-832.

Chen Jing, 2002. The research of Fujian tourist

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Geography, 2002, 1.

Yang Chunyu. 2002. The construction and function of

regional tourism information system, Journal of

Guizhou Normal University(Natural Sciences). 2002.8

Zhou Xinwei, Wang Fusheng, Wang Ying, 2005. The

Design and Development of Beijing Tourism

Information System Based on GIS. Geomatics &

Spatial Information Technology. 2005.8

Zhou Xin-wei, Gong Hui-li, Zhao Wen-ji, Yu Meng-liang,

Wang Ying, Yang Ling-li. 2006. The Design and

Implementation of Beijing Tourism Geographical

Information System Based on GIS, Bulletin of

Surveying and Mapping. 2006.5.

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