INDIVIDUALIZED TOURIST EXPERIENCE ROUTE RECOMMENDATION: İSTİKLAL STREET IN BEYOĞLU

Abstract

Linear tourist routes in cities are a significant obstacle to spreading social functions such as culture, trade, shopping, and entertainment. To address this issue, the study proposes a novel approach that creates personalized, multi-sensory experience routes to revitalize the interaction between place and tourist. The purpose of the study is to design a route-generation model that draws multi-sensory and personalized experience routes. In addition, the importance of multi-sensory experience associated with the concept of 4E (Entertainment, Education, Esthetic, and Escapist) in tourism is emphasized. The design of the model was carried out with datasets collected from 80 different small and medium-sized workshops in four different themes, each containing 20 points of interest (POI), located in Beyoğlu which is one of the important historical centers of Istanbul. In this way, the route generation model allows tourists to have a multi-sensory experience; it provides personalization according to the content, location, time, and budget preferences of the tourists, and experience routes are drawn. Newly proposed routes for historic city centers aim to provide a more personalized tourism experience by revealing hidden gems based on tourists' senses and 4E preferences.