Application of Travelling Salesman Problem for Planning of Tourism Routes

Abstract

The aim of this research is to design a tool which helps to plan the suitable traveling route by applying Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) to find the shortest distance and the highest popularity rating. Comparing between the heuristics technique which is the nearest neighbor method and the metaheuristics technique which is the genetic algorithm method to find the appropriate route for a case study; Nakhon Nayok Province. Then, using the results to develop the website which displays tourism information and route planning. The website consists of four parts; recommendation of tourist attractions, tourism in each district, tourism based on category of travelling, and tourism based on traveler’s need. In particular, the fourth part, the users can select four choices out of totally forty-two choices of tourist attractions by writing JavaScript code to search for the routes on Google Maps and show the routes on the website. One hundred respondents are requested to answer questionnaires regarding the website usage. The assessment is revealed by the result of average and standard deviation, 4.33 and 0.56 respectively, with the highest level of satisfaction.