Travel guides go digital
Tourists can now calculate routes and costs via mobile Internet
- Published: 27/01/2010 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Database
Travelling to Ayutthaya is now more convenient thanks to the facility to calculate costs, time and energy consumption prior to the trip.
A tourist uses his smart phone to plan his sightseeing route and calculate how much time and money will be required.
The National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) has teamed up with the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), while the Ministry of Culture has recently introduced http://www.pi-pe.org, a website which helps tourists to plan their travelling via their smart phone or personal computer.
The pi-pe website currently can be accessed via smart phone and computers running the Safari or Firefox internet browsers.
The pi-pe website helps tourists to plan their travel itinerary with the recommended places such as restaurants and noodle shops, or sightseeing highlights such as temples and museums or natural or cultural attractions.
The program has been initiated to tackle the existing problem of disparate tourist information and to enable tourists to fully navigate each route, point to point, during their travels. The pi-pe website has accumulated GPS mapping and travel information to help tourists enjoy more convenient route planning.
"Recommended destinations will show up together with the route and distance calculation," said Nectec researcher Rattapoom Tuchinda, who spent six months developing the pi-pe program for both computer and smart phone access.
Once tourists plan to visit multiple locations, the program will calculate travel times and then figure out how long they should spend at each place in order to fulfill their itinerary.
"The content is provided by TAT and our team has also thoroughly surveyed the course so the distance in kilometres from the starting point can be exactly calculated," Rattapoom noted.
Users can also calculate their energy usage and costs based on which kind of fuel they use.
For users without smart phones or other mobile internet devices,
schedules can be saved and printed to take on the journey.
Currently, the system details are some 100 interesting locations in Ayutthaya, including temples, museums, restaurants, hotels, and more. As well as route info, users can also access details such as entrance fees and opening times.
The developer noted that the program was originally developed for use with the iPhone, but the team is planning to deliver to other mobile platforms, such as Android and Blackberry.
"The program has been developed for the Safari and Firefox browsers but we have not developed for Internet Explorer because it causes difficulty in the back-end system interface development and there are lots of loopholes on IE," said Rattapoom.
He admitted that the content is not yet complete, as it requires feedback from users. "All content is in Thai language as initially we would like to serve Thai people, but if the project receives enough support, we will do English versions as well," he said.
Nectec director Pansak Siriruchatapong noted that the collaboration has initially focused on public services covering six areas: libraries and archives, archaeology, museums, local wisdom, contemporary art culture, and classical dance. Ayutthaya is the pilot province.
The website has accumulated cultural content from the community and organisations and married it with technology to increase cultural capital, which is a mechanism of creative economy.
Nectec is now developing the program for Sakon Nakhon and Pathum Thani.
Nectec assistant executive director Virach Sornlertlamvanich noted that Sakon Nakhon has a strategy to stimulate the provincial economy with tourism.
Pathum Thani also has many cultural attractions including Mon culture, the Science Museum and Rice Museum.
Both provinces have their own independent administration and boast strong infrastructure and content, said Virach, who added that the provinces have collaborated with TAT and the Science and Technology Knowledge Centre (STKC) of the Science and Technology Ministry.
Nectec will initially take care of the pi-pe website server, but this will eventually be handled by the provinces and TAT.
Virach added that Nectec is now talking with the private sector to ask companies to carry on the project and commercialise the website. "Software companies view that this research project is useful and has potential for business in terms of services, so they can create revenue from the program," he said.
Phanom Kaributra, TAT executive director, IT Office, noted that consumer behaviour has changed as tourists are now more likely to search for information on the net.
Citing the National Statistical Office, Phanom said the there are some 16 million Internet users in Thailand and 40 million mobile phone users. Thus web and mobile will become the most useful tools for information search.
"TAT has a great deal of tourism information, and thus we need to disseminate this to better serve tourists," he said.
The director added that this content will not only be from TAT, but will also be consumer-generated content, thus it can create added value and return more revenue to the community.
"This is really green tourism as travellers can plan in advance, calculate everything, and save energy and money," he said.
The program that TAT has worked with the Culture Ministry initially focuses on cultural tourism, but in the future it will extend to other areas such as business travel, eco-tourism, and so on.
"The program needs to integrate all these areas in order to be of most benefit to tourists," he said.
Relate Search: The National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre, Tourism Authority of Thailand, Science and Technology Knowledge Centre
About the author
- Writer: Sasiwimon Boonruang
- Position: Database Reporter
- source : bangkokpost.com
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