Knowledge-Based Prototype for Assessing the Appropriateness of Tourism and Hospitality Services for Accessible Tourism

Abdulaziz, Tamer Ahmed; Fathey Moawad, Ibraheim; Wageh Mahmoud, Samy; Fayyad, Sameh

doi:10.21608/jaauth.2022.128680.1329

Knowledge-Based Prototype for Assessing the Appropriateness of Tourism and Hospitality Services for Accessible Tourism

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Tourism Studies Department, High Institute for Tourism and Hotels, 6 of October City

² Information Systems Department, Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Ain shams University Cairo, Egypt

³ Hotels Studies Department, Faculty of Tourism and Hotels, Suez Canal University

10.21608/jaauth.2022.128680.1329

Abstract

Although there is an expanded interest towards the accessible tourism, besides the continuous support offered by the decision-makers in the tourism and hospitality sector which aims at rehabilitating the tourism and hospitality services to be appropriate to receive this type of tourism, there is not a mechanism to evaluate services and facilities presented by the tourism and hospitality sector for the accessible tourism. Therefore, it is difficult to ensure their commitments towards the application of the UNWTO regulations and guidelines in this regard. Furthermore, no research has sought to discuss this important issue. Hence, this article underscores how the tourism and hospitality industry could better use emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) to specify to what extent tourism and hospitality sectors provide acceptable and adequate accessible products and services to all tourists, regardless of their physical limitations, disabilities, or age. In this context, a knowledge-based prototype was proposed to play this role. Moreover, The propsed prototype can assist decision-makers in rating various services and facilities offered by the tourism and hospitality sectors to tourists with disablities. To ensure the quality of the proposed knowledge-based prototype and to assure about its ability to present accurate advice, three approaches were adopted for testing the proposed prototype. Smart PLS-3.0 was utilised to test the hypotheses. It is found that, the proposed knowledge-based prototype is valid to be used. Practicallly, it is believed that the knowledge-based prototype's outcomes will be valuable and beneficial for various stakeholders in the tourism and hospitality sector.

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