Nectec produces online tourist guide

Fancy a holiday trip, but lack the time to investigate and plan? A group of software developers at the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) may have solved your problems.

They have created an online travel-assistance application called Pi-Pe.

The service is designed to help tourists to plan trips by providing a wide range of information, including attractive recommended destinations, travel routes, distances and in-depth details of each tourist attraction.

The application is now available for tourists at www.Pi-Pe.org. It can also be accessed by users of iPhones.

Initially, Pi-Pe covers just its first pilot cultural-tourism destination, Ayutthaya province in Thailand's upper central region.

Development of the application is part of Nectec's Digitised Thailand Scheme - a collaborative project involving the Science and Culture Ministries and the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).

The concept of the application is to make a trip as easy as possible, with only three steps, all of which can be arranged and planned by the tourists themselves, said the head of Nectec's research team, Rattapoom Tuchinda.

At Pi-Pe.org, the first step is determining the journey schedule, including dates and starting and finishing times. Then the starting point must be chosen from a list of places provided or by entering latitude and longitude from a current GPS location.

Next, a destination must be chosen from a provided list or recommended routes.

Once these three steps are taken, the application immediately calculates the cost of the trip. It generates a trip agenda, a trip route (presented in Google map), a precise distance and the total cost. The programme makes its calculations according to distances, fuel costs at market prices and admission fees (if they apply).

"I designed and developed the application from my own experiences. I found that I spent too much time seeking information when arranging trips," said Rattapoom. "I think that if we can make the planning of trips easier, it might encourage tourists to travel more. That is why I developed this application."

As well as helping travellers to plan their trips, Pi-Pe also provides brief official information on each destination, supported by TAT. It lets tourists know how popular each destination is according to the votes of visitors. In future, it is planned to open the application to accept tourist reviews.

In its first stage, Pi-Pe.org provides around 100 tourist places, covering about 10 per cent of the available attractions in Ayutthaya province. The development team plans to cover more Ayutthaya attractions and to develop guides to other provinces.

Rattapoom said the service was currently available free of charge. He hopes it will help tourists to get more enjoyment from travelling.

"All programs we used are open source and open platform. So, when users access this application from PCs they need to use only Firefox or Safari. This application is not supported by Internet Explorer. That's why I developed a mobile version for iPhone only - because the iPhone's browser is Safari. We use geolocation technology to give the application accuracy in locations and distances," he said.

The application is also designed for minor changes of plan. Tourists following a certain route can decide to call in on interesting places within 10 kilometres of the route. Pi-Pe will search and make suggestions and tourists can change their agenda easily and conveniently.

Pi-Pe is currently available only in Thai language, but foreign languages are planned in the future.

The director of the Culture Ministry's IT Department, Thaweesak Sri-Aroon, said Pi-Pe was the first result of collaboration between Nectec and his ministry. While Ayutthaya province is the first pilot destination for the project, it will be extended to cover cultural tourist destinations throughout the country.

An executive director of TAT's Information Technology Office, Phanom Kaributra, said Pi-Pe.org would help the tourism industry a lot because people preferred to seek information online to plan trips according to their own agendas. With 16 million Internet users and more than 40 million mobile-phone users in Thailand, Pi-Pe.org will encourage many more people to travel.

"In its next phase, the features of this application might be enhanced to involve all stakeholders in the tourism industry, such as restaurants, resorts and hotels and souvenir shops. If this application helps tourists with real-time information - such as telling them the museum is currently closed - they might adjust their plans and spend more time at a location if they know there are interesting places nearby. That means they will also spend more money," Phanom said.