WEB-Based Tour Planning Support System Using Genetic and Ant Colony Algorithms

Abstract

With economic development, people have more and more free time and become more leisure-oriented. However, because of the time and physical constraints, most of the people are prone to taking short vacations. Well planning in advance is the foremost task that must be done in order to have a pleasant trip. A good travel plan not only allows a visitor gain the maximum enjoyment during the trip, but also satisfies his/her needs within the time and budget constraints. This study employs genetic algorithms and ant colony algorithms to do travel itinerary planning and compares the performance of the routes found by the two methods. In addition, to prove the practicality of the proposed algorithms, a travel itinerary planning website was set up for this study. With the developed tour planning support system, visitors can input their travel preferences and requirements via a laptop or mobile device with Internet connections. The system can automatically plan the travel itinerary that most fits the visitor's requirements and utilize Google maps to show the planned routes on visitors' screen.