This study introduces a data-driven and machine-learning approach to design a personalized tourist recommendation system for Nepal. It examines key tourist attributes, such as demographics, behaviors, preferences, and satisfaction, to develop four sub-models for data collection and machine learning. A structured survey is conducted with 2400 international and domestic tourists, featuring 28 major questions and 125 variables. The data are preprocessed, and significant features are extracted to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of the machine-learning models. These models are evaluated using metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, F-score, ROC, and lift curves. A comprehensive database for Pokhara City, Nepal, is developed from various sources that includes attributes such as location, cost, popularity, rating, ranking, and trend. The machine-learning models provide intermediate categorical recommendations, which are further mapped using a personalized recommender algorithm. This algorithm makes decisions based on weights assigned to each decision attribute to make the final recommendations. The system’s performance is compared with other popular recommender systems implemented by TripAdvisor, Google Maps, the Nepal tourism website, and others. It is found that the proposed system surpasses existing ones, offering more accurate and optimized recommendations to visitors in Pokhara. This study is a pioneering one and holds significant implications for the tourism industry and the governing sector of Nepal in enhancing the overall tourism business.

An ICT Framework for Tourism Industry of Nepal: Prospect and Challenges ICT;information access;internet;data center;tourism industry; Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has revolutionized the world and has profound impact on the social and economic development of a country. Implementation, practice and accessibility of ICT is viewed as an integral part of any countries' strategy today. These new technologies are becoming popular due to their ability to produce, distribute and provide instant access to massive information in no time. ICT has pervaded almost every aspect of human endeavor that may include health, education, economics, governance, entertainment etc. Tourism is one such vital industry that find enormous application of ICT in its strategic and operational level, to promise long term benefits and enhance economic growth. Tourism industry in western world and some developed countries of Asia have applied ICT for more than 30 years, and have gained tremendous benefits. Nepal which is also growing as one of the favourite tourist destinations lacks proper implementation of ICT in this industry. In our study we examined how the ICT can play a vital role in developing the tourism industry of Nepal. This study is an exploratory research based on primary data collected from tourist visiting Nepal, supported by information from tour operators, government agencies, NGOs and INGOS. A framework is devised on the basis of data and information collected and finally, discussions elaborate on the prospect and challenges of implementation of ICT in tourism industry of $Nep{\grave{a}}l$.

KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems TIIS Paper Details