A hybrid approach to plan itinerary for tourists

With the rapid development of information, communication and transportation systems, the number of tourists is increasing all over the world. Most of the tourists are facing problems when they visit unfamiliar places. That's why it is often difficult for an individual tourist to make an optimal sightseeing itinerary plan during a tight schedule. To help tourists in this situation, a hybrid approach has been proposed in this paper to recommend an optimal itinerary plan. In this approach, K-means clustering algorithm has been used to cluster various tourist spots based on the geographic location and preferences of the tourists. Then the individual cluster is treated as a travelling salesman problem. To find the optimal route in each cluster greedy and 2-opt algorithms are applied. To switch from one cluster to the next cluster, a route is established from the last spot of one cluster to the centroid of the next cluster. Thus, all the tourist spots will be visited efficiently.