Heuristics for the black and white traveling salesman problem

The black and white traveling salesman problem (BWTSP) is defined on a graph G whose vertex set is partitioned into black and white vertices. The aim is to design a shortest Hamiltonian tour on G subject to two constraints: both the number of white vertices as well as the length of the tour between two consecutive black vertices are bounded above. The BWTSP has applications in airline scheduling and in telecommunications. This article proposes and compares several heuristics for the BWTSP. Computational results are reported for instances involving up to 200 vertices.