Digitalization of Tourist Routes: From Geography to Cultural Representation in the Media

The article presents the development and experimental evaluation of an algorithm for adaptive optimization of pilgrimage routes, which combines real-time navigation with the provision of cultural and information multimedia content. The rapid development of digitalization of the tourism sector and the growing popularity of pilgrimage routes necessitate the creation of intelligent systems capable of reducing the overload of tourist facilities, increasing the efficiency of visitor movement, and at the same time preserving the cultural and spiritual value of heritage sites. The proposed approach integrates geolocation data, Internet of Things technologies, short-term visitor flow forecasting models, and multimedia cultural content into a single smart tourism system. The solution architecture includes a mobile client application, a server-based analytical platform, and a forecasting module based on machine learning methods for assessing the load of tourist facilities. Route optimization is carried out dynamically using an advanced pathfinding algorithm and heuristic local optimization methods. The effectiveness of the proposed solution was assessed within the framework of a cross-experiment conducted on a real pilgrimage route of 8 km in length, covering 15 cultural and religious monuments of the city of Baku. The study involved 60 people who used both traditional and adaptive navigation modes. The results obtained showed that the use of adaptive route optimization allowed to reduce the average duration of the route by approximately 14% and reduce the waiting time at tourist sites by almost 45% compared to the traditional approach. In addition, an increase in the level of user satisfaction, a decrease in the feeling of congestion of locations, an increase in the number of views of multimedia content and improved results of testing knowledge about visited sites were recorded. The results obtained confirm that the combination of algorithmic route management with means of cultural representation contributes to increasing the efficiency of tourist movements and deepening the cultural and spiritual experience of travel participants. The proposed approach can be integrated into mobile applications for cultural and religious tourism, as well as adapted for other types of thematic tourist routes.