A Study on Tourist Destinations Recommendation App by Medical Tourism Type Using User-Based Collaborative Filtering

• Published in: The International journal of advanced culture technology Vol. 8; no. 4; pp. 255 - 262
• Main Authors: Cai, Jin, Ryu, Gihwan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Tourist destinations; Collaborative filtering; Types of medical tourists; Medical tourism
• ISSN: 2288-7202; 2233-7318

Recently, medical tourism is recognized as a high value-added industry because of its longer period of stay and higher expenditure than general tourism. In particular, although the number of medical tourists visiting Korea is increasing, the perception of Korean medical services is low. The purpose of this paper is to develop the app which, based on medical tourism type, recommends tourism destinations. Additionally, this proposed app can expand general tourism as well. It can provide tourists with medical information easily by sorting types tourists. Besides, as medical tourists normally stay long, we can take the advantage of post-treatment time. This app collects medical information data and tourist destination data, and categorizes the types of medical tourists into four categories: disease medical tourism, traditional medical tourism, cosmetic medical tourism, and recreational medical tourism. It provides medical information according to each type and recommends customized tourist destinations. User-based collaborative filtering is applied for tourist destination recommendations.