Designing the next generation of mobile tourism application based on situation awareness

Mobile tourism applications are changing the way travelers plan and experience tourism in the years to come. A large and growing body of literature has investigated the development of context awareness mobile applications for tourism industry. Various aspects of context awareness are studied and applied in tour guide companions and recommendation systems. However, these context awareness mobile applications do not improve traveler´s situation awareness especially in pre-visiting and during visiting phases. In other words, when using mobile applications, travelers may not perceive the situation correctly, fail to comprehend the situation or they are unable to anticipate the future development. This paper proposes a theoretical approach for designing mobile tourism applications using situation awareness. Three scenarios of traveler visiting experiences are presented and suitable designs for each scenario are discussed.