Geographic information system application for improving Chiang Mai University tourism routes

Chiang Mai University (CMU) is ranked as an attractive destination for Chinese tourists. The university has launched a 'Visit CMU' project to serve the tourists with the electric-power vehicles for campus sightseeing. In addition, the tourism schedule has not satisfied the university's expectation including unattractive locations in a current route, therefore, an objective of this research is to study and propose an optimal tourism route in CMU. Travel time data of each point were collected and analysed by a statistical method. Attractive sightseeing places were selected from experts by using an interview. Lastly, all data were employed to generate a computer-simulated scenario by a geographic information system (GIS) program. The results of this research showed that the generated optimal tourism route in GIS by adopting operation times of each tourism electric power vehicles point which had different characteristics and experts' suggested tourism points reduced the travel time and distance.