Moments of Interest: A novel cloud-based crowdsourcing application enhancing smart tourism recommendations

Abstract

In the modern era where the tourism industry continues to grow and contribute both socially and economically at global scale, a demanding need to boost the tourism sector through IT arises. This need along with recent, technology driven, behavior patterns where users, with the use of their smartphones capture a wide number of images daily has led to the proposal of a new concept namely “Moments of Interest” (MOIs). This novel concept is realized on an innovative mobile application that aims at offering personalized recommendations to tourists based on special “moments” residing in user captured images. In order to achieve this, image labeling through machine learning is utilized and a novel cloud-based “Memories Database” is created.