@conference {826, title = {EnQuest: A Cloud Datalake Infrastructure for Heterogeneous Analytics in Maritime and Tourism Domains}, booktitle = {DATA 2023 (demo)}, year = {2023}, abstract = {

Within recent years, transportation and supply chain have been affected by an avalanche of data including IoT devices, online services, social media and others. However, the implemented solutions so far are fragmented, physically distributed, require specialized IT knowledge to deploy, and involve significant IT experience to operate even for trivial tasks. In the context of the ENIRISST+ project, we developed EnQuest1, an online data lake that allows users without any IT background to harvest, store, organize, analyze and share heterogeneous, multi-faceted maritime/tourism data. EnQuest provides a zero-administration, zero-cost, integrated framework that enables scientists, practitioners and other stakeholders within the above domains to easily: (i) deploy data acquisition services (crawlers, dataset imports, questionnaire forms), (ii) design and manage versatile customizable data stores, (iii) share whole datasets or horizontal/vertical data shards with other stakeholders, (iv) search, filter and analyze data via an expressive yet simple-to-use graphical query engine and visualization tools, and (v) perform user management and access control operations on the stored data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach in the literature that targets users without an IT background and focuses on collecting, managing, analyzing, and sharing diverse, multi-faceted data in maritime the and tourism sectors. The main goals of the proposed demonstration are to showcase the EnQuest system to the conference participants and promote the work of the ENIRISST+ project consortium. During the demo we will (i) deploy social media crawlers to gather maritime data and show the participants how to process and visualise them, (ii) create live questionnaires using the EnQuest functionality, ask the participants to fill them in and demonstrate the live processed data on appropriate dashboards, and (iii) demonstrate how to import data and subscribe to data flows of other users through the implemented publish/subscribe module. For the needs of the demo we will only require internet connection and a desk; we will have our own laptops to use at the demonstration.

}, keywords = {big data, cloud systems, data analytics, datalakes, maritime, tourism}, author = {Kimon Deligiannis and Christos Tryfonopoulos and Paraskevi Raftopoulou and Nikos Platis and Costas Vassilakis} } @article {817, title = {Multichannel Digital Marketing Optimizations through Big Data Analytics in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry}, journal = {Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research}, volume = {17}, year = {2022}, month = {oct}, pages = {1383{\textendash}1408}, abstract = {

The tourism sector increasingly relies on technology to acquire new clients in a world overflowing with information. So, the main question that needs to be answered is:What digital marketing strategy should be adopted to attract customers and built digital brand name by incorporating websites and social media big data? The authors of this research utilize web analytics and big data to build an innovative methodology in an effort to address this issue. After the data collection, statistical analysis was implemented, followed by a fuzzy cognitive map and an agent-based simulation model in order to illustrate the usage of social media and user experience in multichannel marketing. The findings suggest that, in contrast to the websites of other industries, such as logistics, where customers want to finish their inquiries as quickly as possible and leave the webpage, it is advantageous for tourism websites to keep customers{\textquoteright} attention moreon their website in order to increasevisibility. Additionally, the research further highlights the importance of personalization and user-engagement content to e-WOM, suggesting to tourism businesses to encourage posts made by customers and employees.

}, keywords = {advertising, big data, brand, digital marketing, e-WOM, hospitality, multichannel, social media, tourism, web analytics}, doi = {10.3390/jtaer17040070}, url = {https://www.mdpi.com/0718-1876/17/4/70}, author = {Damianos P. Sakas and Dimitrios P. Reklitis and Marina C. Terzi and Costas Vassilakis} } @inbook {807, title = {Safe Travelling Period Recommendation to High Attack Risk European Destinations Based on Past Attack Information}, booktitle = {Lecture Notes in Social Networks}, year = {2021}, pages = {77{\textendash}100}, publisher = {Springer International Publishing}, organization = {Springer International Publishing}, abstract = {

Terrorism is a significant deterrent for tourism. It affects both visitors and local citizens and personnel of a country or area. On one hand, the potential visitor will probably avoid travelling to a high attack risk country, due to safety reasons, hence will miss the opportunity to visit it, and, on the other hand, the country{\textquoteright}s tourism will decline. This work addresses the aforementioned problem by (1) showing that relatively safe visiting periods for high attack risk European countries can be predicted with high accuracy, using limited information, comprising of attack and fatality data from the past years, which are widely available, and (2) developing an algorithm that recommends relatively safe periods to potential travellers. The results of this work will be useful for tourists, visitors, businesses and operators, as well as relevant stakeholders and actors.

}, keywords = {Evaluation, Recommendation algorithm, Risk Calculation, Safety Perception, Safety prediction, Terrorist Attacks, tourism}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-67044-3_3}, author = {Dimitris Spiliotopoulos and Dionisis Margaris and Costas Vassilakis} } @conference {724, title = {TripMentor: Challenges and prospects for culture and tourism in the Attica region (Greek title: {\textquotedblleft}TripMentor: προκλήσεις και προοπτικές για τον πολιτισμό και τον τουρισμό στην περιφέρεια Αττικής{\textquotedblleft})}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 3nd Pan-Hellenic Conference on Digital Cultural Heritage-EuroMed 2019}, year = {2019}, abstract = {This paper presents the TripMentor project which is related to the tourism and civilization in the region of Attica. The main goal of the project is the presentation, in two languages, of the rich cultural content of the region to the tourists, through an Internet-based environment and through mobile applications. The goal of the project is to guide the visitors through many possible alternative routes, which include points of interest, as well as enterprises with tourism-related offers, while at the same time attempts to combine these routes with cultural points of interest. The project interrelates information, venues and visitor profiles with an automated way, striving to offer a unique personalized experience, tailored to the needs and preferences of each user. The project challenges are mainly technical, since through the project procedures (a) information regarding the points of interest should be gathered in an automated fashion (b) information about events related to points of interest must be taken into account and (v) data related to users, and especially the user profiles must be discovered and exploited so that the available information can be synthesized into a unique experience. In this context, we present the project application domain and the related challenges.}, keywords = {cultural information, culture, geospatial data, Social Networks, tourism, visitor profile}, author = {Costas Vassilakis and Vassilis Poulopoulos and Manolis Wallace and Angeliki Antoniou and George Lepouras} } @conference {713, title = {TripMentor Project: scope and challenges}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Cultural Informatics, co-located with the 14th International Workshop On Semantic And Social Media Adaptation And Personalization (SMAP 2019)}, year = {2019}, abstract = {We present Tripmentor, a novel project, that is related to tourism in the region of Attica. The project has as main scope to provide rich media content to tourists through a web and mobile environment in two languages trying to guide them through alternative routes that include places of interest as well as organizations with offers to tourists. The project interconnects people with places and events in an automated manner trying to personalize on each tourist{\textquoteright}s personality. The challenges of the project are mainly technological as through the processes of the project a) automated information about venues must be collected, b) information about events related to venues must be fetched and finally c) data related to system users and mainly their profile should be discovered and created in order to offer a unique experience to each of them. We present the scope of the project as well as the challenges of its implementation.}, keywords = {cultural related information, geodata, personalization, social media, tourism, tripmentor}, url = {http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2412/paper6.pdf}, author = {Costas Vassilakis and Vassilis Poulopoulos and Manolis Wallace and Angeliki Antoniou and George Lepouras}, editor = {Angeliki Antoniou and Manolis Wallace} }