Providing Mobile Access to a Community-based 3D e-Tourism Environment

Tourism provides the foundation for user-generated content and online communities, allowing travellers to search for, receive and exchange information before or after trip. Virtual tourism environments, impersonating community members as avatars in a 3D world, provide a new way of communication and interaction possibilities. What is still missing is the support of the on-trip phase of the tourism life cycle. This enables travellers to access community services while on move through their mobile devices, and on the other hand, providing the possibility of sharing the visits on an ad hoc basis with the community members. This proposal sheds light onto this topic by establishing a framework to classify possible mobile services as a first step.