A new accessibility based team orienteering approach for urban tourism routes optimization (A Real Life Case)

Abstract One of the most crucial issues in the tourism industry that can help attract more tourists is to design optimal travel routes for tourists. The Team Orienteering Problem with Time Windows (TOPTW) is one of the approaches that can solve Tourist Trip Design Problem (TTDP). In this study, TOPTW has been applied to design a multi-objective model to determine the optimal travel routes, considering the accessibility. The present study aims 1) to maximize the profit from visiting the Points of Interest (POIs) to increase the satisfaction level of the travel agency, and 2) to maximize the number of visited POIs to improve the satisfaction level of the tourists. Two concepts of “indirect coverage” and “neighborhood radius” are applied to increase the accessibility of the tourist attractions and POIs. Thus, around each POI, a small radius and a large radius are considered, and if the points are in the radius coverage of the points located in the main routes, they can receive indirect coverage from those points. Also the time-window overlap issue for POIs is vital to determine the possibility of indirect coverage and makes the conceptual model of the research closer to reality. Also, several indicators are proposed for calculating accessibility. A multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) is formulated to solve the studied problem, and the results obtained by the proposed algorithm are compared with those of CPLEX software (for small-scale) and NSGA-II algorithm (for large-scale). The findings indicate that the genetic algorithm outperforms the NSGA-II algorithm. A sensitivity analysis is also performed to evaluate the effects of the proposed model parameters on the optimization process. Finally, the model applicability in practice is examined based on a case study in Tehran, the capital of Iran.