3. Overview on the use of IoT technologies for accessible tourism

In the last decade, Travel Recommendation Systems (TRSs) have benefited from the Information Communication Technology (ICT), which has become the main source of information for the tourists, assisting them in choosing services around them [16]. As the technology makes its way into the fabric of everyday life, it become easier even for people with disabilities to take advantage of TRSs.

In particular, the IoT, as an enabler technology, can offer people with disabilities the assistance and support they need to achieve a good quality of life and allows them to participate in the social and economic life. In [17], the authors propose an IoT architecture to assist people with disabilities and envision some application scenarios where such users can benefit from the IoT, such as during shopping, at school or in a domestic environment. They claim how the IoT can make easier for people with some kind of impairments to carry out their daily activities and then increase their autonomy and self-confidence.

However, despite the rapidly increasing number of tourists with disabilities, both the tourism industry and the scientific community has paid little to no attention to find solutions to facilitate and make their tourist experience more enjoyable, due to the assumption that this group of people is usually not interested in traveling [18].

The few works analyzing the needs of people with disabilities aim to understand which can be their stimuli to travel; in [5], for example, the authors research the criteria consumers with disabilities regards as being important to their choice of accessible accommodation; similarly, the work proposed in [19] deals with understanding how tourists with mobility disabilities make decisions to choose accessible travel products.

Nevertheless, even if there are several solutions which apply the IoT paradigm to sustain and manage tourism (smart tourism scenarios), little work has been done to offer assistance and support to people with disabilities. In [20], the authors underline the strict correlation between smart city and smart tourism conceptualizations and the focus on public service models at the expense of comprehensive and systematic exploration of its business opportunities and implications. In [21], several possible smart tourism scenarios are presented: from services to help select destinations and search suitable travel arrangement to services that provide on-site support to the tourist during the trip helping her/him to discover nearest places of interest. Another example is proposed in [22], where the authors propose an agent-based system; such a system enables to model different kinds of activities in a flexible way, and allows the implementation of location-aware applications.

Finally, in [23], an IoT solution for sustainable tourism has been proposed and applied to a specific Smart City scenario. The authors take into account two main elements in order to propose the best set of Point of Interests (PoIs) for the tourist, namely the choice of the transportation mode and the information regarding the queue time expected at each PoI. Even if no implementation has been provided, simulated results show how such an approach based on the IoT paradigm can increase the tourists' satisfaction.

To the best of our knowledge, in this chapter we go for the first time beyond the state of the art, by proposing a solution to apply the IoT paradigm to accessible tourism for people with disabilities, in which cruise ship tourists, with limited available time, wants to maximize their tourist experience.
