Development of a Mobile-Based Hostel Location and Recommendation Chatbot System

Abstract

A Chabot is a conversational intelligent agent that has the capability of engaging in human-like interaction with its users. A lot of chatbots have been developed, but to the best of our knowledge, there are few or no chatbots that have been developed for hostel location integrated with a recommendation component to ease the cost, time, and stress of identifying suitable hostels for students, especially at higher institutions of learning. Therefore, this work develops a location-based chatbot system enhanced with recommendation capabilities to allow students to locate hostels that satisfy their needs in an easy and efficient way. The chatbot system was designed as a cross platform compatibility application with different tools and technologies which include Python, HTML and CSS with JavaScript to enhance the interactivity and attractiveness of the system. PHP provides access to MySQL database. The chatbot system provides good experience to its users in terms of loading speed, user friendliness, interface appearance, platform compatibility and recommendation accuracy as it allows them identify suitable hostel speedily and as well provides personalized recommendation of hostels to them.