MERIHARI-Area Tour Planning by Considering Regional Characteristics

Sotaro Moritake, Hidekazu Kasahara, Qiang Ma

Abstract: There are various styles of sightseeing, such as sightseeing tours and city walk, and support is required to meet the various needs derived from these styles. Most existing methods specialize in a single sightseeing style and optimize time and distance. We proposes a “MERIHARI Area Tourism” style in which sightseeing spots, POI (Point Of Interest) are clustered into multiple areas and visiting style is varied for each area, so that visitors can enjoy the “representative” of the sightseeing city. The proposed method divides a tourist city into multiple areas (clusters) by clustering tourist POIs. Next, features obtained from trajectory data and image data are analyzed to calculate representative spots that symbolize area characteristics, and multiple area visitation courses (plans) that include these places are generated. The system then optimizes these courses based on the user’s time and other conditions and generates a sightseeing plan, contrasting the number of visiting spots in each area.