A web‐based multi‐agent decision support system for a city‐oriented management of cruise arrivals

• Published date: 01 April 2017
• Author: Pol Mateu Santamaria,Claudia Di Napoli,Silvia Rossi
• Date: 01 April 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/isaf.1406

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

A web‐based multi‐agent decision support system for a

city‐oriented management of cruise arrivals

Claudia Di Napoli

1

|Pol Mateu Santamaria

2

|Silvia Rossi

3

1

Istituto di Calcolo e Reti ad Alte Prestazioni

C.N.R, Naples, Italy

2

Facultat d'Informatica de Barcelona,

Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona,

Spain

3

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica e delle

Tecnologie dell'Informazione, University of

Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

Correspondence

Silvia Rossi, Dipartimento di Ingegneria

Elettrica e delle Tecnologie dell'Informazione,

University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy.

Email: silvia.rossi@unina.it

Summary

Cruise tourism represents a strategic sector for the economic growth of several countries,

impacting on different direct and indirect markets. The arrival of cruises in a city represents an

unmissable opportunity to increment its tourist market penetration. Nevertheless, the manage-

ment of an unforeseen number of passengers that need to visit a city in a short time may also

have a negative impact, so reducing the expected benefits. This is mainly due to the difficulty

of taking the right decisions when organizing the dispatching of passengers in different city areas

since these decisions depend on several conditions that can also dynamically occur, and may have

an impact on different city sectors. Here, a decision support system is proposed to help involved

stakeholders to make decisions to plan passengers' transportation in the city and also to evaluate

the consequences for the city if the plans are really implemented. The system is designed accord-

ing to the multi‐agent paradigm, so allowing one to easily manage the necessary coordination

among different entities and data sources that are usually distributed and need to cooperate to

provide useful suggestions. In addition, a prototype of a web‐based application is provided to

end users, so that it can run on heterogeneous platforms, and it can be easily accessed by

different users from different devices, as it is the case for the considered application domain.

KEYWORDS

cruise tourism, decision support system,multi‐agent systems, web service technologies

1|INTRODUCTION

The cruise industry represents a strategic sector for the economic

growth of several countries impacting on different direct and indirect

markets. One of these is surely the tourism market relying on services

and tourist attractions of the port and of the tourist cities reached by

the cruise. So, the arrival of cruises in a city represents an unmissable

opportunity for the city economy to increment its tourist market

penetration. In fact, around 80% of cruise passengers think that a

cruise holiday is a good way to sample destinations that they may plan

to visit again on a future vacation. So, it is crucial for cruise passengers

to have a nice touristic experience when stopping at the destinations

planned by the cruises.

Nevertheless, the simultaneous arrival of cruises with the

disembarkation of several passengers, and their consequent visit of

the city, requires managing the arrival of a considerable number of

tourists for a short time, so causing a negative impact on the city in

many aspects: traffic, transportation needs, tour planning, port

facilities, and so on. Not always are cruise destinations ready and

equipped for it, and for some destinations cruise ships often

carry more passengers and crew members than the resident

population, so overwhelming infrastructures if there has been

insufficient planning.

A static plan to manage the arrival and the distribution in the city

of a considerable number of tourists could fail due to dynamic events

that may happen in the city interfering with the plan; for example, a

public transportation strike, a protest and/or unplanned building works

preventing the transit in specific areas of the city, or events that may

be a touristic attraction at a specific time. Intelligent decision technol-

ogy may help to solve complex problems that require reasoning under

conditions changing in a dynamic way, with a degree of uncertainty

and sometimes with incomplete data, as is the case when planning

the logistics of cruise passengers' arrival in a city, usually characterized

by limited time, a variable number of people, and the needs to avoid

congestion problems around the port area and in the city.

In this study, a system to support the decision‐making process

necessary to organize the logistics of cruise passengers to reach areas

of touristic interest in a destination city is proposed. It extends the

DOI: 10.1002/isaf.1406

62 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Intell Sys Acc Fin Mgmt. 2017;24:62–72.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/isaf