Independent travel recommendation algorithm based on analytical hierarchy process and simulated annealing for professional tourist

Independent travelers, especially professional independent travelers, tend to plan their trip schedules according to their interests, preferred hotels, landmarks they wish to visit, budgets, time availability and various other factors. Hence, travel schedule planning is valuable for satisfying the unique needs of each traveler. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for independent travel recommendation, consisting of three steps. Firstly, landmarks in the destination are selected under the specific constraints, which is modeled as a 0-1 knapsack problem. Then, the landmarks will be evaluated comprehensively using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) model, and the greedy simulated annealing algorithm is adopted to select the best landmarks with high evaluation scores. Next, with AHP-decision model, a most reasonable free line to the tourist destination is selected from multiple candidates. Lastly, the path planning among the landmarks is abstracted as a TSP (Travelling Sales Problem) problem, and the simulated annealing algorithm based on roulette wheel selection is adopted to solve it. Through simulation experiments, by comparing with package tour from the aspects of landmark selection, valid sightseeing time ratio, valid sightseeing consumption ratio and the tourist satisfaction, the proposed algorithm is evaluated and analyzed. Simulation results illustrate the feasibility and rationality of our approach, which can be used as an effective reference deciding individualized travel schedules and trip planning.