[Zurück]

I. Seidel, M. Gärtner, M. Pöttler, H. Berger, M. Dittenbach, W. Merkl:
"Itchy Feet: A 3D e-Tourism Environment";
in: "Tourism Informatics: Visual Travel Recommender Systems, Social Communities, and User Interface Design", N. Sharda (Hrg.); IGI Global, Hershey, PA 17033, USA, 2009, ISBN: 978-1605668185, S. 209 - 242.

In this chapter we describe an e-Tourism environment that places emphasis on a communitydriven
approach to foster a lively society of travelers. It enables them to exchange travel
experiences, recommend tourism destinations or just catch some interesting gossip. Moreover,
business transactions such as booking a trip or getting assistance from professional travel agents
are a constituent part of this environment. All these interactions happen in an integrated, gamelike,
3D Virtual World where each tourist is impersonated as an avatar. We draw a retrospective
on the specification, design and implementation of this e-Tourism environment and present the
status quo. We describe how we applied Electronic Institutions, a framework developed and
employed in the area of Multi-Agent Systems, to the tourism domain. Furthermore, we present
our approach to connect a 3D Virtual World with Electronic Institutions. Our goal is to provide a
test bed for assessing the acceptance of virtual environments, as a medium to overcome the nontangible
nature of tourism products.

e-Tourism, 3D Virtual World, Electronic Institution, Multi-Agent System, Online Communities, Game Design, Game Engine, Middleware, Front-End Computers, Human/computer interaction, Graphical User Interface, 3-D graphics, Agent, Data

http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-818-5

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/PubDat_180726.pdf