The second meeting of the Kansai Tourism Informatics Study Group 2025, jointly organized by The University of Informatics Educational Corporation, The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics (KCGI) and Society for Tourism Informatics, was held on February 1, 2026 at KCGI Kyoto Ekimae Satellite, where students, graduates, and faculty members in KCGI IT Tourism field of Concentration presented their research.In addition to members of academic societies from various parts of the Kansai region and Tokyo, a large number of students from KCGI and Kyoto Computer Gakuin (KCG) also participated.There was a lively exchange of opinions, and the event served as a valuable opportunity for students to learn and interact, which will benefit their future research and studies.
In the workshop, Professor Manabu Ohta of Faculty of Environmental, Life, Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, gave an invited lecture on "Sightseeing Recommendation Using Reputation Information Analysis with Large-scale Language Models", covering sightseeing spot recommendation and sightseeing route recommendation based on the viewpoints that travelers value.Mr. Jiang Ning, President of Nichia Int Consulting Co.,LTD, who managed the Chinese Pavilion at EXPO 2025 OSAKA, KANSAI, JAPAN, gave a multifaceted presentation titled "Management of the Chinese Pavilion at EXPO 2025 OSAKA, KANSAI, JAPAN," in which he presented the Chinese Pavilion at the cultural crossroads of the Expo as both a piece of architecture and a story.KCGI students, alumni, and faculty members studying tourism also presented the results of their research.
The purpose of this research group is to enhance the appeal of tourist destinations and promote the dispersal of visitors through initiatives such as the collection and analysis of tourist movement data, the digitization of tourism resources, and efforts toward the realization of smart cities, with the goal of implementing and expanding these initiatives in the real world by leveraging a framework for collaboration among industry, government, and academia.KCGI has established "IT Tourism" as one of the specialized fields, where students learn to create new tourism services and tourism business models by applying ICT.This seminar was organized primarily by faculty members specializing in tourism IT.
