Conceptualizing Context in an Intelligent Mobile Environment in Travel and Tourism

Context in travel and tourism represents the bridge between a specific need and the necessary information to fulfil that requirement. The notion of context is becoming popular in travel and tourism in areas such as location-based services that support decision-making on the go. It becomes even more important within today’s intelligent mobile environment for travel, which is represented by cutting-edge mobile technologies including smartphones and their apps. It is argued that it is necessary to conceptualize the notion of context in relation to the holistic tourism experience and the behavioural characteristics of travel. By bringing together literature on context-awareness computing and travel and tourism, this paper challenges existing approaches to context modelling and offers insights into the rich and multidimensional nature of the notion of context in travel and tourism. Finally, it offers a number of design principles for context modelling and calls for interdisciplinary research on understanding the notion of context in tourism.