This project aims to provide innovative services that enable travelers to book and actively participate in “soft sport tourism” activities, which is not currently addressed by other platforms and websites. It aims to be the first worldwide web platform offering adaptive and personalized recommendation services for online booking of full packages by customers based on their preferences and sporting interests.

On the business side, the project aims to improve and optimize the existing ST76 web platform by developing new software services and integrating with third-party travel management services. The sports travelers, sport event organizers and tourism and sport industry stakeholders will be the prime sources of research surveys, sports data collection and analysis activities. This data analysis will drive the refinement of the ST76 web platform requirements and architecture. Based on the refined ST76 platform specification the front-end user interfaces and back-end server software development activities will be executed, including extension of the current ST76 database and development of new Web APIs offering facilitation services (e.g., provisioning service – such as booking a training area or specialized equipment for the sport, excursions service – tours offered by the organizer) for the sporting activity. Also, external Web APIs or web elements offered by third-parties for flight tickets, hotels and car rental services will be efficiently integrated and managed dynamically, to offer the first platform of its kind internationally that provides the full set of services for “soft sport tourism”. In overall, all web services must be linked to a sporting activity/event, each event has custom registration data and is composed by a different set of sporting activity services.

On the research side, the project aims at identifying research works and performing a survey on recommender systems (RS) and context-aware recommender systems (CARS) for tourism. In specific, personalization methods are used to generate a user recommendation according to the user preferences and interests. Thus, the recommender system has an objective to filter unwanted information and to provide specific results for a specific user. The target of the survey is to study existing recommendation algorithms and methods applied in tourism. In fact, further research is required since a sports tourism RS has not been defined in existing work, and thus the project will be useful to new researchers that want to develop a user specific recommender system for sport tourism. Finally, based on the data analysis in relation to “soft sport tourism” activities and the research survey a new CARS algorithm and system will be defined and implemented. This CARS algorithm/system will then be integrated and tested with the final ST76 web platform.