User Modelling in E-Tourism: A Human-Computer Interaction Perspective

The topic of user modelling (UM) in the context of e-tourism needs to be approached from a human-computer interaction perspective. E-tourism as a continuously booming domain is heavily dependent on ICT, from the early eras when online booking became available to the full-fledged mobile tourism applications of today. User modelling is a means to overcome the “one-size-fits-all” strategies which were not appropriate or satisfactory neither for the provider nor for the customer. This chapter enumerates different dimensions of UM approaches, such as emulating vs. complementing the user, implicit vs. explicit data collection, as well as stages of technical maturity, and also provides a retrospective view on the different evolutionary developments of UM from static to highly adaptive and hybrid models. The history of user modelling is characterized by an excessive focus on basic algorithms and business logic (adaptiveness), and a lack of attention to the customer’s front-end user experience (adaptability). To address this issue, the chapter emphasizes the relevance of human-computer interaction (HCI) in the context of user modelling and e-tourism, by describing key concepts such as user experience and exemplary methods like personas. The chapter concludes with a discussion and an outlook on future developments. Specifically, the potentials of segmented personal user models are mentioned, which are owned by the user (instead of the provider) and allow for exchanging only those parts of the user model in a customer-specific way that are needed in an actual interaction.