TripFromTV+: Exploiting social networks to arrange cut-price touristic packages

Tourists need advice about what to do in their trips. Bearing in mind the wide adoption and influence of social technologies from Web 2.0, we propose a tourism recommender system that offers tourist packages with two features: (i) they include the attractions and activities that best match the users´ preferences, which are inferred from their profiles in social networks, and (ii) these packages have a reduced price if they are purchased by a number of users defined by the tourism providers registered in our system. To gather those many purchasers, we exploit the diffusion mechanisms of social networks, through which users make existing offers known to their contacts. Package providers benefit from novel profitable business options, while users enjoy personalized, permanently updated, reliable and on-move tourism offers, which can be accessed from fixed and handheld consumer devices.