=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2855/main_short_5
|storemode=property
|title=Tourist recommendations with a touch of SPICE: A TRS with Deep Cultural Understanding
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2855/main_short_5.pdf
|volume=Vol-2855
|authors=Tsvi Kuflik,Paul Mulholland,Alan Wecker
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/wsdm/KuflikMW21
}}
==Tourist recommendations with a touch of SPICE: A TRS with Deep Cultural Understanding==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2855/main_short_5.pdf
ACM WSDM WebTour 2021, March 12th, 2021 Jerusalem, Israel 19
Tourist Recommendations With a Touch of SPICE: A TRS With
Deep Cultural Understanding
Tsvi Kuflik † Paul Mullholland Alan J. Wecker †
Department of Information Faculty of Science, Technology, Department of Information
Systems Engineering & Mathematics Systems
The University of Haifa The Open University The University of Haifa
Haifa, Israel United Kingdom Haifa, Israel
tsvikak@gmail.com paul.mulholland@open.ac.uk ajwecker@gmail.com
ABSTRACT social cohesion. This paper is the outline of an idea how such
technologies could be expanded to create a different type of TRS.
Even though tourist recommendation systems (TRS) try to This methodology is of extreme importance when it comes to
maximize user satisfaction by providing recommendations which areas where conflicts existed or still exist. In fact, the association
will be rated highly by the user; there is room for trying to provide of an area with conflict (past or present) can actually lead to new
recommendations which normally do not rate highly, but during the forms of tourism. Dark Tourism, originally identified by Lennon
experience provide content which will be thought-provoking. This and Foley (1996), is used to describe an area that can be connected
will be beneficial both to the visitor and the host country. with conflict, tragedy, disaster, suffering or death becoming a site
of tourism, visitation or pilgrimage. Sharpley (2009) discusses how
an area of Dark Tourism can become a site used to convey
CCS CONCEPTS (possibly conflicting) political messages and ideologies. Sharpley
• Information systems->Information systems applications->Mobile (2009) provides as an example The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
information processing systems •Human-centered computing- He notes that numerous sites related to the Troubles, in particular
>Collaborative and social computing->Collaborative and social in Belfast, have an associated tourist industry presenting
computing theory, concepts and paradigms->Social content sharing alternative, conflicting perspectives on historical events. Dark
Tourism in North Ireland has attracted recent media attention of
local tourist initiatives such as walking tours, each telling their own
KEYWORDS
stories, which the providers of the tours may consider unheard in,
diversity tourist recommender systems, community model or contrary to, official narratives (BBC, 2018).
Another example is Jerusalem is a city considered to be holy for
Jews, Christians and Muslims. Hence, over the years, it attracted
1 Goals all three religions attention, but not always in a peaceful manner.
The city was conquered over and over again and currently is a place
In the SPICE 1 project, we aim to promote social cohesion by
of dispute between Palestinians and Israelis where every side
researching and developing tools and methods, validated by
claims to own it due to various reasons. Visiting the city and getting
implementation in five case studies, to support citizen curation
the diverse points of view may lead visitors to understand better
with groups at risk of exclusion from participating in shared culture
the complexity and possibly, get to know both sides of the issue.
and interacting with other groups. Tourism is a domain that offers
By providing diverse content in the form of material generated by
a variety of opportunities for achieving this goal. When
citizens can lead to authenticity and acceptance. This can even be
considering tourism and specifically providing information to
important for the host country, e.g., Israel, in that it allows her to
tourists about cultural heritage attractions, usually we can easily
present the conflict and address issues in a manner that adds to trust
find multiple points of views regarding places and events that took
and understanding but at the same time not dismissive of the
place there over time. Different people from different origins
visitor's intellect.
and/or with different cultural background may feel differently
about places and events. Enabling visitors to explore diversity of
opinions and points of view may help them understand other
groups and cultures, be more tolerant and empathetic and this, in
2 Methods
turn may contribute to a better social cohesion. A TRS which while In areas associated with conflicting political ideologies, there can
not only focused on recommending POIs, but also focus on be prejudice and a lack of social cohesion among both the
introducing diversity of explanation and information representing inhabitants and visitors who subscribe to alternative political
diversity of opinions of local groups about the place and events viewpoints. Allport (1954), in his influential work that become
may help tourists and locals alike to better understand the place and known as contact theory, proposed that prejudice and conflict
culture and by the use of technology support the goal of enhancing between groups can be lessened by bringing people together,
allowing them to recognize each other’s common humanity. Zaki
1
https://spice-h2020.eu/
Copyright © 2021 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
ACM WSDM WebTour 2021, March 12th, 2021 Jerusalem, Israel 20
WebTour’21, March, 2021, Jerusalem, Israel T. Kuflik et al.
(2019) describes how contact theory become operationalized as an 2 Challenges and Pitfalls
approach in which groups were brought together in a context that
gave them each equal status (even if one group had more power The quest to bring different viewpoints has many challenges and
outside the intervention) in order to learn about each other and pitfalls. On one hand one may choose items that are a bit bland in
build cooperation. order not to upset the appearance of social cohesion, this may prove
However, Zaki (2019) reports on examples where the to be uninteresting and not reflect realty and thus be of less use to
intervention did not work as anticipated. A three-week contact- the visitor. On the other hand, material that is inflammatory may
based programme between Catholic and Protestant boys in cause people to ignore the material completely or cause further
Northern Ireland, descended into a fight. Although elements of distancing in distinct opposition stated goals. Thus, the need to
contact could be effective, such as sharing your point of view and search for material that states opposing views but still either
listening to the views of others, full contact may not necessarily invokes empathy or discusses the issue alongside a shared value.
work. In another example described by Zaki (2019), Israelis felt
better about Palestinians after hearing their stories but Palestinians
felt better about Israelis after telling them their stories. The 2 Conclusions
assumption of contact theory that all should participate equally, While the SPICE project was intended to promote social cohesion
both giving and getting perspectives did not hold. Recent work has within the different communities which make up the society
broken down contact into more specific empathetic processes such surrounding a museum or cultural heritage organization; we see the
as perspective giving and perspective taking (Bazalgette 2017, advantages in using the methodology to introduce “outsiders” to
Zaki 2019). These processes can be effective in reducing prejudice the complexity surrounding a culture that they may be visiting and
but participants need agency over how they engage with them. For promote a new type of tourism which encourages diversity as
example, a person who perceives their group as having less power opposed to popular “more of the same” recommender systems.
may benefit from perspective giving (telling their story) but not
perspective taking (receiving the stories of others). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This suggests ways in which TRSs could be enhanced to This project has received funding from the European Research
promote understanding in tourist areas associated with alternative, Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research
conflicting political viewpoints. The TRS could be used as a and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 870811).
platform for the members of different groups to share their stories.
Contributors could potentially receive feedback on the number of
people who have engaged with their stories, in order the receive
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/1188913.1188915.
Copyright © 2021 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).