Mobile Tour Assistant for Malaysia

Malaysia's tourism industry has seen a rapid growth rate for the past years, and played a
significant role in the development of the country's economy. 2007 is a special year for
Malaysian tourism since it is called the "Visit Malaysia" year in celebration of 50 years of
Independence. Information Technology has made remarkable contributions to the growth of
tourism industry in Malaysia. Its efforts to promote tourism range from websites providing
information to systems to service tourists. However, while countries with well-developed
tourism industry like France and Hong Kong have developed comprehensive tour assistant
packages for tourists, Malaysia is yet to do so. Thus, a comprehensive mobile tour package is
needed for Malaysia.
The objective of the project is to develop a well-designed tour assistant running on PDAs which
makes use of current trends in mobile applications such as the adoption of AI technique in
scheduling. Due to time and resource constraints, the project focuses on areas within and around
Kuala Lumpur and targets on short-stay and transit tourists.
Going through a thorough literature review and following the waterfall methodology, the project
has successfully developed a full package of mobile tour assistant including the back end and
front end. The project also makes contribution to creatively applying Genetic Algorithm, an AI
technique in plan auto-scheduling. The author hopes that the package will be of high commercial
value and contribute significantly to boosting Malaysia's tourism.