Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
museums. Beyond the museum context, early prototypes of mobile tourist applications developed
models for tourist-related information with maps and positioning (GPS) technology (e.g.
Laakso,Gjesdal and Sulebak 2003) in mobile tour guide systems. Abowd, Atkeson, Hong, Long,
Kooper and Pinkerton (1997) in one of the earliest studies detailing a prototype 'Cyberguide'
recognized the critical elements of any mobile tourism application as being: a cartographer-map
component, to display geographic information on the device; an information component, to
provide relevant tourist information on what is available; a positioning component so that users
can locate themselves within the destination context; and a communications component to
allow tourists to communicate with each other or to contact relevant service personnel.
Another early example was the CRUMPET prototype, which developed a user-friendly,
context-aware tourism service, designed for travellers who did not have the time to plan all the
elements of their trip (Poslad, Laamanen, Malaka, Nick, Buckle and Zipl 2001). CRUMPET
proposed services which would integrate 'four key emerging technology domains and applying
to the tourism domain: personalised services, smart component-based middleware or “smartware”
that uses multi-agent technology, location-aware services and transparent mobile data
communication'
(2001: 28). The CRUMPET project not only encapsulated the core problems
facing visitors within the context of their being in-the-destination, but also established the major
technological components required to meet these needs. Until recently it was accepted that the
main commercial applications of telephone-based 'mobile tourism' applications were in three
areas:
tourist or museum guides with pre-installed applications, namely rigidly defi ned content (in
text, visual and auditory format) that cannot be customized according to user preferences;
mobile devices used to access mobile web portals and browse tourist information of interest;
mobile electronic guides devices that use either wireless or mobile network connections to
access context-aware services.
(Kenteris, Gavalas and Economou 2009: 104)
Other early examples of mobile services aimed at enhancing tourist experiences through service
development. Schöning, Hecht and Starosielski (2008) developed a demonstrator application
entitled 'Wikear', that aimed to overcome the problems of scale of tourism information (that
information is either, very generic, or is very detailed but only at the small scale, micro-level) by
generating locationally relevant stories based on data mined from Wikipedia. The resulting stories
were then organised according to principles derived from narrative theory and built into
educational audio tours. Ballagas and Walsh (2007) fi rst built a gaming experience into a tourism
destination context with the development of a 'spell-casting' game available for tourists to play
in a destination (Rasenberg in Germany) which connected historical information about the
destination to users' mobile devices in an interactive gaming format. Therefore in a range of
contexts and disciplines, tourist experiences have become the focus for the development of new
mobile services that have attempted to address challenges to the visitor experience beyond the
confi nes of visitor attractions.
However, more recently, the focus of research seems to have shifted towards an understanding
and critical evaluation of the potential implications of smartphone use in transforming the
inherently social nature of tourist experiences. Firstly, in the context of increasing orientation
generally to mobility, increased travel for all types of purposes, coupled with a more disparate
social network, all social life has become mediated by personal, digital and mobile technology.
Travel has become increasingly necessary in order to sustain social relations (Larsen, Urry and
Axhausen 2007). Equally, tourism can be experienced vicariously through the Internet, through
