Personalized Tourist Recommender System: A Data-Driven and Machine-Learning Approach

Abstract

This study introduces a data-driven and machine-learning approach to design a personalized tourist recommendation system for Nepal. It examines key tourist attributes, such as demographics, behaviors, preferences, and satisfaction, to develop four sub-models for data collection and machine learning. A structured survey is conducted with 2400 international and domestic tourists, featuring 28 major questions and 125 variables. The data are preprocessed, and significant features are extracted to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of the machine-learning models. These models are evaluated using metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, F-score, ROC, and lift curves. A comprehensive database for Pokhara City, Nepal, is developed from various sources that includes attributes such as location, cost, popularity, rating, ranking, and trend. The machine-learning models provide intermediate categorical recommendations, which are further mapped using a personalized recommender algorithm. This algorithm makes decisions based on weights assigned to each decision attribute to make the final recommendations. The system’s performance is compared with other popular recommender systems implemented by TripAdvisor, Google Maps, the Nepal tourism website, and others. It is found that the proposed system surpasses existing ones, offering more accurate and optimized recommendations to visitors in Pokhara. This study is a pioneering one and holds significant implications for the tourism industry and the governing sector of Nepal in enhancing the overall tourism business.