Personalized Intelligent Hotel Recommendation System For Online Reservation

--a perspective of product and user characteristics

Xiong Yu-ning
School of Economics and Trade Xihua University Chengdu, Sichuan, P.R. China, 610039 Xyn1926@163.com
AbstractOnline hotel reservation makes travel easier, But a large number of online hotel information also makes people become unable to follow. Online hotel reservation websites need try to gain exposure to customers eyes and recommend a personalized hotel list. Nowadays, Personalized Intelligent Hotel Recommendation Systems have been researched widely, but rarely in online hotel reservation. The paper summarizes representative online hotel reservation websites personalized recommendation system situation, such as qunar, kuxun, ctrip and elong etc. personalized recommendation have poor performance. This research firstly extracts Hotel Characteristic factor , attempts to analyze customers browsing and purchasing behaviors and secondly constructs a personalized online hotel marketing recommendation system polymerization model for Multi-level customer ,at last presents an achieve Matlab procedure implementing the core arithmetic of the personalized recommendation. Keywords-intelligient recommendation; preference; product characteristic; cluster; Matlab personalized

Geng Li-xiao
School of Management Hebei University of Technology Tianjin P.R.China, 300130 Lixgeng@yahoo.com.cn shown that with the help of personalized recommendation system, sales can be increased by 2% -8%. According to annual industry report in 2009 on the online reservation market, some domestic representative travel websites which accounted for a larger share of the online hotel reservation market, such as qunar, kuxun, ctrip and elong etc, have few personalized recommendation service. It is difficult to bring the user a satisfied personalized experience.
TABLE I. COMPARISON CHART OF DOMESTIC HOTEL RESERVATION WEBSITE PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATION SYSTEM

Recommendation Hot product

I.

INTRODUCTION

The most successful e-business application is online travel market. IResearch Consulting statistics show, China's online travel reservation market income reaches 37.4 billion Yuan 2009. Online travel reservation market still has grown 13.2% .the data indicates that with the development of online travel companies influence, as well as the convenience and price transparency, it brings consumers a better reservation experience, more and more users choose to book travel products online. Online reservation hotels have its low cost advantage, lacking of purchasing guide providing users with product information and advice, it makes buyers need to spend more time to find the product. At present, although travel site has also introduced a variety of recommended services, such as hot product recommendation, promotion recommendation and so on, trying to achieve a similar effect of procurement assistant, but with the requirement of personalized information service environment, the traditional recommendation system model of "to a class of products recommended to all" can not meet customers satisfaction. Users hope the recommendation provided by tour e-commerce sites is "tailor-made", well targeted, initiative and even intelligent, which reflect the user needs of personalized recommendation system. Studies have

Table.1 shows that compared with the recommendation function. Qunar has the most personalized characteristic, followed by Ctrip and Elong. From the perspective of personalized recommendations, only a few sites have personalized recommend service to customers. Some researches show that hotel product recommendation is risky.

Promotion Destinations New Product Offline Correspondence Others comments travel notes Position Persona Stayed in the -lized hotel, but also Recomlived in mendati Interesting -on forecast Recommend to friends Multi recommendation Browse History Collection A: Ctrip hotels.ctrip.com B: Elong www.elong.com C: Qunar www.qunar.com D: Kuxun www.kuxun.cn E: Chinahotel www.chinahotel.com F: Mangocity www.mangocity.com G: Aoyou www.aoyou.com H: Chunqiu www.china-sss.com

978-1-4244-5326-9/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

We believe that recommendation is a useful attempt to increase customers viscosity and upgrade the intelligence of travel site, it is a useful attempt. II. RESEARCH BACKGROUND

i = 1,,L j=1,..k

(1)

In formula (1),i stands for total number of products ,k stands for total number of products characteristic. Also, Sij is the value of the ith products jth characteristics. B. Customer profile module In this section, a new customer profile model is proposed reflecting product characteristics. It is necessary to understand customer interests and preferences and then provide suitable hotel products or services at an adequate time. A good recommendation system must be relied on in order to recommend products or services of interests. Lee and Yang (2003) pointed out that the most important issue in personalization research is to construct a computational model for each individual user to predict his preferences for incoming information. For travel Web site, customers type is often different. Web sites for different types of customers should provide different personalized recommendation. Customers are divided into three categories: primary users, Intermediate users and advanced users. Primary users are usually the first time to visit the site, when products meet their demand, they would like to purchase the hotel, so no purchase records and comment records; The Customer profile module characteristics are obtained from users browse history. For Intermediate users, they have purchase and comment record. Customer profile module data are on the composition of their purchase and comment data. For advanced user, they have been booked hotel for many years. Customer profile module data not only are on the composition of their purchase and comment data, but also the time record.
TABLE III. CUSTOMER PROFILE PARAMETER MATRIX

A. Hotel product characteristic extraction This research is based on product characteristics. Through customers browse and transaction records, their preferences toward specific product characteristics can be learned. Though different people have their preferences, but the hotel product characteristic is stable and as objective as possible. Our aim is to find the stable and objective characteristic. Through a survey of online hotel booking factors which users interested in , The following factors were selected. The characteristics are obtained from product database.
TABLE II.
HOTEL PRODUCT CHARACTERISTIC

Term 1 2 3 4 Cuisine 5 Free Breakfast 6 Room amenities (domestic direct-dial, International direct-dial Broadband 8 Pool/billiards room 9 Fitness facilities K1 K comments Credit cards accepted by hotel(China UnionPay Visa, Master) Maximum price Discount Class

value in database D=(8-Discount+1)/(3+1) Value=12345 Providing cuisine of characteristic value is 1, otherwise, the value is 0. Providing free breakfast of characteristic value is 1,otherwise, the value is 0. Providing Room amenitie of characteristic value is 1, otherwise, the value is 0. By the fast and slow speed to give 5-point scale score results Having Pool/billiards room of characteristic value is 1, otherwise, the value is 0. having fitness facilities of characteristic value is 1,otherwise, the value is 0. China UnionPay is 1 , Visa, Master of value is 2, all of them is 3, otherwise is 0. 5-point scale comprehensive score results

Primary user SNi=( SN1SN2 SNk (i=1 2..k) III.

Intermediate user SIi= (SI1SI2 SIk), (i=1 2..k)

Advanced user SLi= (SL1SL2 SLk,T), (i=1 2..k)

RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES

In this section, we describe our method in detail by presenting a conceptual framework to carry out personalized hotel recommendation.

The product characteristic can be expressed in Matrix S in formula (1) : S(m)=(S11,S12,S1j,S21, S2j,.,Sij)

A. Model framework Users profile d l Users browse and transaction Longterm users profile modul Tim e algo rith m Feedbac Product characteristic d l Similarity Cluster profile Sorting Recommendation

Customer

Figure 1. Research model framework

The research structure is shown in Fig.1. For finding customer interests, the procedures are divided into product profile module and customer profile module. In the recommendation modules, products not yet purchased or rarely purchased can still be recommended to customers with browse history. Product profile module mainly finds product characteristics in the product database, where characteristics of products constitute the profile. In customer profile module, product characteristics from customers past browse and purchase records are drawn for customer profile. Then customer profile and product profile are later analyzed for similarity, and candidate products of recommendation are thus generated. This mainly attributes to the research based on products purchased in the past, thus the recommendations are not likely to miss products out. B. Recommended model for the primary users Primary users are often to visit the site in unregistered capacity, no purchase records and comment records, a collection of resources which the current user has access to or resource requirements submitted online can de treated as his browse trace, to analyze the customers preferences based on product characteristics, because the similarity between resource is nature and more stable, the similarity can are calculated offline store and regularly updated, the algorithm can solve the scalability problem. Then select similar hotels which havent been visit from product to recommend to customer. Primary users Model consists of the following three steps. Step 1: Define the product characteristics data S(m), matrix S(m) can be gained in product database as formula (1 ). For example, a product matrix S constructed for a booking site; the number of the product L is 21, and the number of characteristics is chosen from Table.2, the number of the characteristics k is 11.

200 0.25 303 - 0.25 198 - 0.25 467 0 420 - 0.25 760 0.25 1118 0.5 98 - 0.25 177 0 288 1 S = 233 - 0.25 285 - 0.25 167 - 0.25 433 0 412 - 0.25 760 0.25 1318 0.5 68 - 0.25 88 - 0.25 108 - 0.25 266 1

2 1 0 0 4 1 0 1 5 4 1 1 1 3 1 1 2 3.4 4 1 0 1 5 1 1 3 4.8 5 1 1 1 4 1 1 3 4.6 5 1 0 1 4.5 1 1 3 4.9 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 2 1 0 0 3.3 0 0 1 3.7 3 1 0 1 4 1 1 3 2.7 2 1 1 0 2 0 0 0 4 3 0 1 1 2 1 0 1 3.7 2 1 0 0 3 1 0 1 4 4 1 1 1 3 0 1 2 3.5 4 1 0 1 5 1 1 3 4.8 5 1 1 1 3.8 1 1 3 4.6 5 1 0 1 5 1 1 3 4.4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 2 1 0 0 3.3 0 0 1 3.7 2 1 0 0 3.3 0 0 1 4.2 3 1 0 1 3.2 1 1 3. 4 2 11 0 2 0 0 0 4 3 0 1 1 2 1 0 1 4.8

Step 2: To compute an individuals interests, this model analyzes the customer browse histories that included clicks, basket insertions fields. Users browsing records can be selected, for example, the user the has browsed the 1st, 8th and the 9th record, the record number l is 3.Construct customer browse histories matrix SN as bellow,
200 0.25 SN = 98 - 0.25 177 0 2 1 1 0 2 0 0 0 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 2 1 0 0 3.3 0 0 1 3.7

Step 3: Assumes that the user browsing history is based on the case of his near preferences. Such as the user wants to find a hotel can provide free breakfast or a hotel has a fast speed broadband service. So the difference of at least one characteristic is small. Calculate the mean value of each characteristic of the product, get X as following:
l SN SA = i = 1 l ,
1i

SN l

2i

i=1

,.........

.....

SN l

ki

i=1

It is calculates by Matlab, get the result of X:

(2)

SA=[ 158.3333 0 1.6667 0.6667 0.3333 0 1.7667 0 0 0.3333 4.2333] Step 4: To analyze the users interesting, by matrix SA, the users average characteristic preference is indicated. SA joins SN to a new matrix X. X=[SN:SA] (3 ) The value of SA can be treated as the 22nd record. By formula (3), calculated X as following:

2 1 1 0 2 0 0 0 4 200 0.25 303 - 0.25 3 0 1 1 2 1 0 1 4.8 198 - 0.25 2 1 0 0 4 1 0 1 5 0 4 1 1 1 3 1 1 2 3.4 467 420 - 0.25 4 1 0 1 5 1 1 3 4.8 760 0.25 5 1 1 1 4 1 1 3 4.6 1118 0.5 5 1 0 1 4.5 1 1 3 4.9 98 - 0.25 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 177 0 2 1 0 0 3.3 0 0 1 3.7 288 1 3 1 0 1 4 1 1 3 2.7 233 - 0.25 2 1 1 0 2 0 0 0 4 X = 285 - 0.25 3 0 1 1 2 1 0 1 3.7 167 - 0.25 2 1 0 0 3 1 0 1 4 433 0 4 1 1 1 3 0 1 2 3.5 1 1 3 4.8 412 - 0.25 4 1 0 1 5 760 0.25 5 1 1 1 3.8 1 1 3 4.6 1 1 3 4.4 1318 0.5 5 1 0 1 5 0 0 0 5 68 - 0.25 1 0 0 0 0 88 - 0.25 2 1 0 0 3.3 0 0 1 3.7 0 0 1 4.2 108 - 0.25 2 1 0 0 3.3 266 1 3 1 0 1 3.2 1 1 3. 4 158.3333 0 1.6667 0.6667 0.3333 0 1.7667

0 0 0.3333

4.2333

Step 7: Given threshold , use shortest distance method to classify the product
Rij X i , X j are the same type Rij < X i , X j are not the same type

1 Rij = 1 L+1 ' ' 2 1 L + 1 ( xki xkj ) k =1

(i = j ) (i j )

(7)

(8)

Cluster procedure in Matlab has calculated formula (7),(8)and draw the cluster Fig.2 as below:

Step 5: Standardized X, calculate the average and the Standard deviation of every characteristic, and calculate every standardized data.
xk =
sk =
L +1 1 ( x ki ) L + 1 i =1

(4) (5)
Figure 2. Cluster anlysis process

1 L +1

L +1 i =1

( x ki x k ) 2

Then get the standard data can be expressed as formula (6) (6): x ' = x ki x k sk After calculating, standardized data BX, results are shown as following:
ki

x 'ki

Similarity calculating helps us to look for the same type of the 22nd record. so the same type with 22nd record results are selected as 1,3,8,9,11,13,18,19,20 Step 8: Delete users browse history(1,8,9) and get the candidate number: 3,11, 13, 18, 19,20 Step 9: Sort the results of the recommendation. In this sort arithmetic, based on the best product and lowest price, C is defined as the summary of the characteristic except price. Shown in Table.4.
Ci = Sij
i =1 n

- 0.5366 0.5137 - 0.7442 0.5001 1.2789 - 1.0703 - 0.7476 - 1.1742 - 0.8919 - 1.3357 - 0.3679 - 0.2268 - 0.7420 0.0114 - 2.0389 1.2789 0.8919 - 0.7476 0.8129 - 0.8919 - 0.5040 0.9184 - 0.5426 - 0.7420 - 0.7442 0.5001 - 0.7798 - 1.0703 0.6723 0.8129 - 0.8919 - 0.5040 1.2400 0.2664 - 0.1142 0.7671 0.5001 1.2789 0.8919 - 0.0377 0.8129 1.0703 0.3276 - 1.3326 0.1250 - 0.7420 0.7671 0.5001 - 0.7798 0.8919 1.3823 0.8129 1.0703 1.1592 0.9184 1.1476 0.5137 1.5228 0.5001 1.2789 0.8919 0.6723 0.8129 1.0703 1.1592 0.5969 2.2243 1.1415 1.5228 0.5001 - 0.7798 0.8919 1.0273 0.8129 1.0703 1.1592 1.0792 - 0.8434 - 0.7420 - 1.4999 - 2.0389 - 0.7798 - 1.0703 - 2.1676 - 1.1742 - 0.8919 - 1.3357 1.2400 - 0.6058 - 0.1142 - 0.7442 0.5001 - 0.7798 - 1.0703 0.1753 - 1.1742 - 0.8919 - 0.5040 - 0.8502 - 0.2720 2.3973 0.0114 0.5001 - 0.7798 0.8919 0.6723 0.8129 1.0703 1.1592 - 2.4581 - 0.4374 - 0.7420 - 0.7442 0.5001 1.2789 - 1.0703 - 0.7476 - 1.1742 - 0.8919 - 1.3357 - 0.3679 BX = - 0.2810 - 0.7420 0.0114 - 2.0389 1.2789 0.8919 - 0.7476 0.8129 - 0.8919 - 0.5040 - 0.8502 - 0.6359 - 0.7420 - 0.7442 0.5001 - 0.7798 - 1.0703 - 0.0377 0.8129 - 0.8919 - 0.5040 - 0.3679 0.1641 - 0.1142 0.7671 0.5001 1.2789 0.8919 - 0.0377 - 1.1742 1.0703 0.3276 - 1.1718 0.1010 - 0.7420 0.7671 0.5001 - 0.7798 0.8919 1.3823 0.8129 1.0703 1.1592 0.9184 1.1476 0.5137 1.5228 0.5001 1.2789 0.8919 0.5303 0.8129 1.0703 1.1592 0.5969 2.8258 1.1415 1.5228 0.5001 - 0.7798 0.8919 1.3823 0.8129 1.0703 1.1592 0.2753 - 0.9336 - 0.7420 - 1.4999 - 2.0389 - 0.7798 - 1.0703 - 2.1676 - 1.1742 - 0.8919 - 1.3357 1.2400 - 0.8735 - 0.7420 - 0.7442 0.5001 - 0.7798 - 1.0703 0.1753 - 1.1742 - 0.8919 - 0.5040 - 0.8502 0.8133 0.7420 0.7442 0.5001 0.7798 1.0703 0.1753 1.1742 0.8919 0.5040 0.0463 - 0.3381 2.3973 0.0114 0.5001 - 0.7798 0.8919 0.1043 0.8129 1.0703 1.1592 - 0.3679 - 0.6619 - 0.1142 - 0.9961 - 0.3462 - 0.0936 - 1.0703 - 0.9133 - 1.1742 - 0.8919 - 1.0584 0.0073

j = 2,.....k

(9)

TABLE IV.

CANDIDATES AND CHARACTERISTIC VALUE

candidates C3 C11 C13 C18 C19 C20 value 13.75 9.75 1.75 5.75 10.75 11.25 By Matlab calculating, get the last recommendation order. Shown in Table.5.
TABLE V. SORT OF RECOMMENDATION

Step 6: To find which hotel has the similar characteristic with the browse history, we use cluster analysis method to judge which hotel is the same group with browse history. So calculate the similarity of product and SA, Euclidean distance method has been used. The similarity can be expressed by Rij 0Rij1i,j=1,2,3,4,5,L+1and get the Fuzzy matrix Y

1 2 3 4 5 6 C3 C13 C20 C19 C11 C18 13.75 11.75 11.25 10.75 9.75 5.75 The result shows that the best quaintly of the selected hotel that we recommend by order to primary user. In addition, the result also can demonstrate that it can really cluster similar customers effectively, and thus bring recommendation items closer to target customers interests.

C. Recommended model for the Intermediate users Intermediate users are usually defined as such people who have purchased hotel product before. So the purchase record and the users comments are quite crucial to the quantity of recommendation. Model for the Intermediate user is quite similar with the primary user model. But there exist two differences. Users interesting parameter matrix This matrix is combined with the browse history and the purchase records, with increase in the browsing history and purchase records, the average characteristics are more closer to user interests. SD is the purchase records of the intermediate user. It can be explained in formula (11): SDi=(SD1SD2SDk) (i=12..k) SIi=[SNi:SD] (i=12..k) select candidates (11) (10)

can be adjusted the change rate .b the greater the weight the faster growth rate, b can affect the size of the algorithm. Different recommendations systems can change recommend results by dynamically adjusting the value of b to optimize the effect of recommendation. IV. FURTHER RESEARCH

Based on the extraction of the relevant elements of the primary users, this study built a personalized recommendation model for online hotel booking and conducted a preliminary validation of the model. In further research, based on model results with the recommended differences in the actual situation, the study can further filtering elements and improve the elements evaluation mechanisms, and further extraction senior user and the primary differences between the elements of the user to carry out multi-level simulation model. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This paper is supported by University Foundation of Xihua (QW0921202) and Education Reform Project of Xihua University (XJG2010-21-51).

When candidates are selected from X, to intermediate user, users purchase feeling is quite important. When some products comments are below the average. We delete such products and do not recommend them to intermediate user. D. Recommended model for the advanced users For the advanced user is concerned, in addition to the recommendation of the user experience of primary and intermediate model of the users filtering mechanism, the website has such customers purchase records for many years. Recommendation early access and purchase records has relatively minor impact on the generation recommendation, because the users interests are constantly changing as time goes by, but in a relatively short period of time the user's interest is relatively stable, so a user are most likely interested in his recently visited similar resources. Data is identified with user time parameter, in order to enhance the importance of recently records of the recommendation. Time-based weighting function WT (u, i) represents a resource i to the weight of the user u, which is related to Dui function value. In order to highlight the importance of the resources the users recently visited, the weight function should be designed as a non-decreasing function on Dui, that is, for the Dui> Duj with WT (u, i) WT (u, j). as follows:
WT (u , i) = (1 b) + b Dui Lu

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[2] [3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

(12)

WT (u, i) is a linear function, where Lu expresses that time span of the user use the recommendation system, that is, the user access to certain resources, the first time and resources in a recent visit to a certain time interval, b (0,1) is called the weight growth index, changing the value of the b ,the weight