DEVELOPMENT OF AN ANDROID-BASED TRAVEL GUIDEBOOK APPLICATION TO HELP INDONESIAN’S TOURISM GROWTH

Abstract

TourVia is a tour guidebook application created in the form of a mobile-based application. TourVia is an application that focuses on providing information about tourist destinations in Indonesia, not only information, but also providing users with a broader POV regarding tourist destinations. Creating applications with a tourism theme is nothing new nowadays, there are many applications with a tourism theme such as Traveloka, Tripadvisor, Tiket.com, Agoda and many more. The application of technology in the tourism sector is something that really needs to be done, because tourism is one of the biggest contributors to the country's economy, especially Indonesia which has a wealth of tourism. Currently, Indonesia is in the recovery stage after the COVID-19 pandemic which has greatly affected the Indonesian tourism sector [1]. This is one of the aims of making this application to participate in helping Indonesia to quickly get out of the recovery stage and also help promote tourist destinations in Indonesia. Not only that, there are other reasons for making this application, namely helping to introduce tourist destinations that are less popular so that there is an even distribution of local tourist visits, then helping make it easier for local tourists to plan their trips, and also making it easier for local tourists to find information about something. tourist destinations that are supported by user-friendly UI and UX. TourVia uses a sequential search algorithm in the search menu which allows users to search for the tourist destination they want by just typing keywords from the name of the tourist destination. TourVia also uses Firebase as a database for its activity posts. Firebase has a way of working that is similar to B-tree data structure indexes in its operations, making it suitable for activity post menus which have create, read and delete operations. TourVia also combines guidebooks with social media, which is one of the media that has a big influence on the progress of Indonesian tourism.