AS-IT-IC - Austrian-Slovene intelligent tourist information center

Currently, a tourist cannot get the desired information in an integrated way from both the humans and Web services, and much less the joint Austrian-Slovenian services. Typically, Slovenian or Austrian tourist office will provide only predefined national tours and not user-centric cross-border tours. As a consequence, tourists may miss locations they might be interested in visiting and tourist locations get less visits. The goal of the project is to create a joint Austrian-Slovenian center - an ICT supported network of service providers and tourist offices, municipalities, tourists and citizens to enhance continuous cooperation between them. Thus, cross-border tourist exchange, collaboration and expertise transfer between providers will largely increase with respect to the current state. The main project output will be the operational center with humans involved, having support of the following tools: Virtual assistant (providing automatic answering in natural language to the questions and performing services) according to demands from tourists, Communication service (ICT solution that will enable conversation between the tourists, virtual assistants, tourist information workers and local communities), Information sources (inclusion of existing information sources), Recommender system for tour planning, Network of tourist services and services from local communities. The system will help tourists better plan their cross-border visits, discover less popular sites that would otherwise be missed, stay longer and better satisfy their needs. Local communities will easily offer local services and information to visitors, e.g. a tour might include visiting a specialized craftsman and boost selling local products. Tourist officers will get better access to tourists. Project provides the integration of virtual and human services from Austria and Slovenia with the uniform functionality - to provide most relevant information, attract the tourists, and prolong their stay.