A Logic-Based System for e-Tourism

In this paper we present a successful application of logic programming for e-tourism: the iTravel system. The system exploits two technologies that are based on the state-of-the-art computational logic system DLV: (i) a system for ontology representation and reasoning, called OntoDLV; and, (ii) HlLeX a semantic information-extraction tool. The core of iTravel is an ontology which models the domain of tourism offers. The ontology is automatically populated by extracting the information contained in the tourism leaflets produced by tour operators. A set of specifically devised logic programs is used to reason on the information contained in the ontology for selecting the holiday packages that best fit the customer needs. An intuitive web-based user interface eases the task of interacting with the system for both the customers and the operators of a travel agency.