Planning a Tourist Route with the Objective of Maximizing Tourist Satisfaction Within Budget and Time Constraints Using a Mixed Integer Linear Programming Model

Abstract

Planning a tourist route to create an optimal tourist itinerary is crucial because it can save travel time, travel expenses, as well as provide satisfaction and memorable experiences from the journey. This paper presents a mixed integer linear programming model for planning a tourist route that is based on the traveling salesman problem. The proposed model has two objectives. The first is the main objective which is to maximize the satisfaction of tourists with the tourist attractions on the tourist route. The second is the secondary objective which is to minimize the overall travel distance. The constraints considered in this study include ensuring that the expenses and time spent visiting all tourist attractions within the tourist route do not exceed the limits set by the tourists. Furthermore, the tourists must start at the starting point (meeting point or accommodation), go through all tourist attractions along the tourist route, and then come back to the starting point. In this paper, some tourist attractions may not be selected to be on the tourist route due to budget and time constraints. The proposed model was tested with three test problems (Problems 1 – 3) using data on six interesting tourist attractions in Bangkok, 11 in Nakhon Pathom, and 16 in Ayutthaya, respectively. Each problem was assigned a maximum visit time to all tourist attractions on the route, not exceeding 8 hours, and a budget for the entire tour, not exceeding 1400, 1800, and 500 Baht for Problems 1 – 3, respectively. The results showed that the proposed model could find an optimal tourist route for all test problems, where the number of selected tourist attractions on the optimal tourist route in Problems 1 – 3 are 6, 9, and 13, respectively. The solution from the proposed model can be used to create a travel timetable specifying arrival and departure times for each destination. Moreover, it can be used as an option to find an optimal tourist route for travelers in a real-life situation.