Track: Senior Design Project / Final Year Project (FYP) Presentation Competition
Abstract
The research is about designing optimum personalized tourism packages for the tourism industry in Oman. The designing of the optimum personalized tourism packages requires understanding of the framework and the supply chain of the tourism industry in Oman. The stakeholders in the tourism industry are many, which start with the controlling parties that are the ministries, and ends up with the tourists that can be either domestic tourists, or international tourists. The stakeholders of the industry are categorized into three major categories, which are the controlling stakeholder, the service providers, and the end users. The main function of the tourism industry is to interconnect the different service providers with the aim of serving the best to the end users.
The purpose of the research is to design optimum personalized tourism packages using operations research optimization tools based on the needs of the tourists. The economical impact is saving time, effort, and money in touring through Oman’s tourism locations. the designed personalized packages may attract more tourists, and this contributes economically in the tourism industry. Considering the service providers, this will lead to improvements in operations effectiveness in the service provided.
The methodology conducted in the research involves literature review, collection and analysis of data, and development of the mathematical model with its implementation. Based on the data collected from various resources that are Ministry of Tourism, travel agents. Also a questionnaire survey was designed to fill the gaps in the information obtained from the Ministry of Tourism and the travel agents. The data were filtered and the data obtained were used to build on assumptions for the development of the mathematical model. The mathematical model was developed based on assumptions that are generally used in operations research tools, such as TSP, binary assignment problems, and etc.