Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Archives of Computational Methods in Engineering https://doi.org/10.1007/s11831-019-09363-7 ORIGINAL PAPER A Comprehensive Survey on Travel Recommender Systems Kinjal Chaudhari 1  · Ankit Thakkar 1 Received: 19 February 2019 / Accepted: 30 September 2019 © CIMNE, Barcelona, Spain 2019 Abstract Travelling is a combination of journey, transportation, travel-time, accommodation, weather, events, and other aspects which are likely to be experienced by most of the people at some point in their life. To enhance such experience, we generally look for assistance in planning a tour. Today, the information available on tourism-related aspects on the Internet is boundless and exploring suitable travel package/product/service may be time-consuming. A recommender system (RS) can assist for various tour-related queries such as top destinations for summer vacation, preferable climate conditions for tracking, the fastest way to transport, or photography assistance for specifc destinations. In this survey, we have presented a pervasive review on travel and associated factors such as hotels, restaurants, tourism package and planning, and attractions; we have also tailored recommendations on a tourist’s diverse requirements such as food, transportation, photography, outfts, safety, and seasonal preferences. We have classifed travel-based RSs and presented selection criteria, features, and technical aspects with datasets, methods, and results. We have briefy supplemented research articles from diverse facets; various frameworks for a travel-based RS are discussed. We believe our survey would introduce a state-of-the-art travel RS; it may be utilized to solve the existing limitations and extend its applicability. 1 Introduction Most of the individuals move between various geographi- cal locations at some point in their life. Such a movement, also known as a trip, may be within local areas on a routine basis or on the global extension for a longer period of time which is likely to include short accommodation facilities such as hotels and restaurants. The purpose of travelling may vary from person-to-person, for example, business meet- ings, adventure, events, leisure, migration, research travel, or because some people wish to pursue the wanderlust. Such travellers give rise to the economy of organizing communi- ties; they also provide employment to local as well as global businesses. Goeldner et al. [1] identifed tourist, business supplying goods and services to tourists, host community and its government to be the perspectives of tourism; they defned tourism as “the science, art, and business of attract- ing visitors, transporting them, accommodating them, and graciously catering to their needs and wants”. The tourism industry has grown on a large scale in the past many years and numerous travel services have been provided physically as well as virtually. Concerning the development of tourism, Gunn et al. [2] introduced fve functional groups, namely, attractions, services and facilities, transportation, informa- tion and direction, and tourists. These aspects have been explored by many tourism-based service providers. How- ever, the larger the number of service providers, the more difcult it becomes to identify and select a suitable travel plan. In order to reduce the number of eforts that an indi- vidual needs to put on identifying the right travel plan, rec- ommender systems (RSs) have been developed. An RS may be considered as a subclass of information fltering system which predicts an individual’s preferences and suggests a list of suitable options [3]; the suggestions generated by such a system may interest to a particular user [4, 5]. This article presents recommendations for tourism and parallel factors; from a wider perspective, the associated aspects have been explored to justify the requirement of tourism-based RSs. In the tourism industry, transportation, accommodation, food services, attractions, events, adventure and outdoor rec- reation, entertainment, travel trade, and tourism services have been considered as the operating sectors [1]. These crucial sectors are responsible for tourism development. Earlier, the * Kinjal Chaudhari 17ftphde21@nirmauni.ac.in Ankit Thakkar ankit.thakkar@nirmauni.ac.in 1 Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 382 481, India