Building a Mobile Tourist Guide based on Tourists’ On-Site Information Needs

Mobile information services are gradually supplementing and may in the future even replace traditional information sources to support tourists during on-site stay. The scope of the article is to identify mobile information services, already in the preprototype phase, types and functionalities of which are most relevant to tourists during their urban destination stay. For this aim a user-centered approach using both focus groups and expert surveys is proposed. In addition, multiple regression based on acceptance data gathered from 705 tourists allows the deduction of potentially accepted mobile information services targeted to the specific destination use. Finally, by drawing on these results, the architectural framework as well as the various building and implementation steps of a mobile tourist guide called innsbruck.mobile are discussed.