HADT: Hypermedia application development tool for tourist applications

This paper describes an authoring tool prototype design for the development of hypermedia applications. The system is based on a generic object oriented data model suitable for hypermedia, that has been designed and implemented in the authors’ department. The model is extensible for integrated multimedia manipulation and provides an enhanced linking system. The design aims at a general purpose hypermedia application development tool which may well be used for the development of tourist applications. It is of special interest in the Greek tourist market since tourism contributes considerably to the national income of Greece. Current technology provides the hardware for manipulation of multimedia information and increases the quantity and quality of information flow between the user and machine. Thus in a travel agency environment it would be desirable to have an interactive multimedia demonstration helping the user find places of interest in any context (physical beauty, archaeological interest, tourist infrastructure, possible itineraries etc.). Such a tool would be very effective compared with the static presentation of brouchures. HADT has the potential to fulfil these needs when it is developed, and in this paper the authors explore such possibilities. Furthermore, research directions for future work are discussed.