FYP Proposal Document Template

Travel Assist

Final Year Project Proposal

By

Hassnain Ali
Mohammad Hassan Ur Rehman
Ishfaq Ahmed

Supervisor: Dr. Javed Ahmad Shahani

Co-Supervisor: Nisar Ahmad Siddique

Sukkur IBA University

Computer Science Department
(2021)
 Contents
1. ABSTRACT...............................................................................................................3

2. INTRODUCTION and BACKGROUD.....................................................................3

3. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION................................................................................5

3.1 Target Audience.......................................................................................................5

4. LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................................................6

4.1 TripIt(TripIt)............................................................................................................6

4.1.1 Destination Guidance........................................................................................6

4.1.2 Pro-plan of Application.....................................................................................6

4.2 Trip Planner: India's Largest(Holidify.com).............................................................7

4.2.1 Suggestions.......................................................................................................7

4.2.2 Popular trip ideas...............................................................................................7

4.2.3 Travel Guides and Top Things to Do................................................................7

4.3 Couchsurfing(Inc.)...................................................................................................7

4.3.1 Hire Hosts.......................................................................................................... 8

4.3.2 Hangout with other travelers.............................................................................8

4.3.3 Events................................................................................................................8

4.4 Visit a city(City).......................................................................................................8

4.5 Trip Advisor(Tripadvisor)........................................................................................9

4.6 TravelSpend (TravelSpend)......................................................................................9

4.7 Pakrism(Pakrism).....................................................................................................9

5. PROJECT GOAL.....................................................................................................11

6. PROJECT TECHINCAL APPROACH AND METHODLOGY.............................11

6.1 Requirements.......................................................................................................... 11
 6.1.1 User Requirements..........................................................................................11

6.1.2 Functional Requirements.................................................................................12

6.1.3 Non–Functional Requirements........................................................................12

6.2 Design....................................................................................................................12

6.2.1 Front-end.........................................................................................................12

6.2.2 Database and Entity Relationship....................................................................12

6.2.3 System modeling.............................................................................................12

6.2.4 System Architecture........................................................................................12

6.2.5 Test Case.........................................................................................................13

6.3 Implementation......................................................................................................13

6.3.1 Architecture:....................................................................................................13

6.3.2 Node Js Architecture:......................................................................................14

6.3.3 External APIs:.................................................................................................14

6.4 Integration and Testing...........................................................................................15

6.4.4 Unit Testing.....................................................................................................15

6.4.5 Integration Testing..........................................................................................15

6.5 Deployment............................................................................................................15

7. PROJECT MILESTONES AND DELIVERABLES...............................................15

8. WORK DIVISION...................................................................................................16

9. COSTING................................................................................................................16

10. REFERENCES......................................................................................................16

TABLE OF FIGURES
1 Yearly Tourism Share in GDP("Pakistan Tourism Revenue,").......................................4
Figure 2: Architecture......................................................................................................13

1. ABSTRACT
Tourism is an important constituent of socio-economic growth and adds a good amount
in GDP. Pakistan is also rich in terms of historic and heritage sites, museums, art
galleries, natural and built beauties. But still there are allot undiscovered sites and their
respective details that the world does not know about. In addition, it is too hectic for
visitors to find accommodation, food and transportation. In addition, traveling alone is
also not preferred, on the contrary, travelers like to find other travelers going to similar
destinations. Travelers also want to know in advance about the expenses of visiting a
certain city(s) or destination(s). To the best of our knowledge, there are a few apps that
provide local hosting services in a particular city, walkthrough and recommendations
about a desired destination as well as approximate expenses for a complete tour. But
there is no application that combines all these features and provides a comprehensive
service. We propose to create a mobile application that merges all features. The
application will contain registration of users who can add the details about a certain
tourism point, guide selection, hotel and cuisine recommendation, transportation
information, details about tourists with similar destinations and local events. The
application will save time and resources of tourists by sustaining all their needs.

Keywords: Travel & local, tourism, location-based services, travel assistance, tour guide

2. INTRODUCTION and BACKGROUD

In the developed countries tourism departments are well equipped with all the tech and
support for the tourists. Moreover, the third-party applications that suffice the remains, as
made according to the geographical and social structure of those countries, perform well.
These apps specifically target users of a particular country or continent. A larger
generalization would probably result in ambiguity hence we have so many applications
and most of them providing the same services in different areas and sometimes with a
tweak of a few features. The fact that there exists such variety of applications emphasizes
the importance of tourism. Tourism is what shapes the image of a country and boosts
economy. Pakistan is enriched with tourist destinations and tourism contributes a major
share in its GDP. In 2019 the share of tourism and travel in GDP was 7.2% ("Pakistan -
Contribution of travel and tourism to GDP as a share of GDP,"). Below is a graphical
representation of Pakistan’s tourism revenue by year.
 1 Yearly Tourism Share in GDP("Pakistan Tourism Revenue,")

As already discussed, the developed countries have specialized and advanced tech for
support of tourists and the third-party apps also as being developed by keeping the target
audience of those specific countries have all the sufficient equipment. While in countries
like Pakistan, there is not as much support and attention given. Though there are websites
and applications of provinces that contain the information about sites, attractions and
booking but there is still allot missing. Pakistan has a great potential for tourism, its
historical sites, natural attractions, cultural and heritage spots are prominent all over the
world. The top tourist destinations of Pakistan according to seekPakistan("Seek
Pakitan,") are

 Naran Kaghan
 Neelum Valley Azad Kashmir
 Banjosa Toli Peer
 Ratti Gali Lake
 Fairy Meadows Hunza

As you can see that these majorly visited sites are repeated because they have gained
popularity among the masses, but the other spots mostly in the south of Pakistan have
been scarce.

So therefore, this paper discusses a solution in the form of an application. The app will
use the help of usrers to uncover the destinations that have not been in the eyes of tourists
yet. In addition, the app will provide enough information about a certain are to put the
tourists as ease and let them enjoy the travels without having to worry about the future.
The paper will discuss a way of suggesting users places, cuisines and accommodation.
We have the reviewed the best 9 of already existing applications that provide same sort of
services. The selection criteria were number of downloads, relevance and rating. Most of
them are LBS (Location Based Service) which can be explained as information services
accessible through mobile phones. These applications had almost all the required features
but also lacked some as already discussed they were made to facilitate the users of
developed countries.

3. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
There is traveling all over the world. Every traveler needs assistance during the visits as
he/she does not know much about that place he/she is visiting. For this purpose, there are
number of apps developed to give convenience to the travelers. Every application that is
built does not cover every aspect of travel assistance. There are applications that only
assist the travelers to give them reminders. There are applications that gives assistance to
the way they are following. There are applications that only provide the information of
hotels and booking services. There is not any application that is consist of all important
features in compact form. There are few important features such as travel guide,
recommendations for food and hotel and more important that the local’s involvement that
can give more information about the place in terms of history, food, traveling and
hoteling. These are the problems that should be covered at one platform so that any
traveler can get more assistance regarding the place and the people of that city or country.

3.1 Target Audience

 Travelers that can search for travel assistance throughout the city only using app or by
getting tour guide in form of a person
 Locals that can edit history and provide more information about the city as well as up-
vote or down-vote for the given information by other users.
 (Optional) Hotel owner to add hostels and check rating for their hotels provided by
the users that visited it.

4. LITERATURE REVIEW
We have studied 9 already built-in applications for the literature review. All those
systems contain many features for the help of travelers. Every system tried to provide as
much comfort as it can. There are systems that only gives the help to travelers to manage
their time. They are as like reminder or sticky notes. These systems are although very
helpful for the travelers as these have too many download and very nice rating on the
place store. We have only focused on play store because most of the applications on play
store are available on Apple apps store. Moreover, there are more users of android. That
is why, we have focused on android play store. But we will develop an application for
both android and apple.

4.1 TripIt(TripIt)
An application that is very useful and is one of the most download applications for the
travelers. It is the application that gives assistance to the tourist to keep track of his/her
whole trip. It is an application which is used to make the agenda of whole trip. It keeps
track of whole trip. When is your flight, where will tourist stays? How and when tourist
will go for the trip?

4.1.1 Destination Guidance

It gives the guidance of the trip also make the trip safe and sound safer trip for women.
Everyone has a different comfort level when they travel, traveler can set his/her personal
risk level and this application will warn you if you are planning on visiting an area that is
above your threshold.

Moreover, this application helps through the roads because it covers the whole road
structure with the help maps.

4.1.2 Pro-plan of Application

It is an application that gives more features by charging some money. Manage all plans
for free with TripIt, or for about the price of checking traveler’s bags, upgrade to TripIt
Pro to get stress-free travel all year long. By activating this feature, it will offer,

 Send real-time flight status alerts

 Monitor for flight refunds
 Let you know how long the security lines are
 Provide interactive airport and terminal maps

4.2 Trip Planner: India's Largest(Holidify.com)

It is an application that is used in India to help their travelers. It is the country which has
many similarities with Pakistan. Both the countries have same history, same heritage,
almost same taste for the cuisines and same culture. This application also gives many
facilities to the travelers offering number of significant features. It suggests the best
places to visit and makes the tour safe and sound.
4.2.1 Suggestions
It is an application if anyone is using. He/she has not to worry about where to go for tour.
It is because it suggests the user best place near him/her. Makes the tour for him/her and
assist throughout the tour. These suggestions are given to the user based on some filters
or questions.

No worries for next tour if anyone is tourist. It is because it gives suggestions for the next
tour as well. This feature is alike our feature of user given info, it gives suggestions of
places that are less crowded, full of adventures and worth to visit.

4.2.2 Popular trip ideas

As we know that most famous places are everyone’s eye catching so it suggests those
places that are famous in every city or overall, in India.

4.2.3 Travel Guides and Top Things to Do

Plan the travel with well-researched information about various places like best time, top
things to do, HD photos, tourist maps and where to stay, top restaurants with local food,
vegetarian food, etc. You can also get the cheapest and best travel quotes for your trip
from highly rated travel agents for free.

More features that are useful,

i. Trip plans for weeks

ii. Traveling assistance
o Where to go and on which boarding to go in cheap prices.
iii. Articles by travelers

4.3 Couchsurfing(Inc.)
This is another app for travel and tourism, but this concentrates more on socializing. It
has a community of over 500,000 verified members that provide services as hosts or
become available for hanging out.

The app has three main entities events, travelers and hosts. On the main screen you see
these options and on clicking any one of them you are asked to allow location access or
search for a city. After selecting a city, you can see the hosts and travelers available there.
You can contact the hosts that are accepting guests, or the travelers to offer them hosting
or meetup and you can also make yourself available for hanging out. For using all these
features, you must get verified and the lifetime fee for it is 9500$.

The main features it has,

4.3.1 Hire Hosts
In this feature, anyone can find number of verified hosts that will assist you throughout
the tour and provide much more services like accommodation and food throughout the
trip.

4.3.2 Hangout with other travelers

There may be other travelers for the same place. So, anyone can hangout their tour with
the other travelers.

4.3.3 Events
There is another feature that is useful. Not everyone goes for tours. There are people who
just visit other countries or cities only for the events occurring there. For these types of
people this application provides the whole details of events held at any place and provide
an option to arrange an event where the manager will host the travelers that are going to
attend this event.

4.4 Visit a city(City)

This is an application for trip planning basically but provides allot of additional features
too.

It has offline and online guides, ticket and tour purchasing system and free access to more
than a 1000 travel guides (itineraries) created by experts.

After logging in through Gmail, Facebook or app specific account, the main screen is
shown to the user that consists of prominent cities around the world. You can also search
for a city and after you select one of them you are moved to the next screen where you
will see the details about the selected city, the events, cuisines, things to do and famous
places to visit in terms of history, culture and heritage. You can buy tickets to places,
book tours and make the payment right from the app. The app also has user location-
based feature named 'nearby' which lists the famous places in ascending order in terms of
distance.

The feature it contains are,

 Purchase tickets of places

 Find out what is famous about the city
 Book tours
4.5 Trip Advisor(Tripadvisor)
This is one of world’s most popular traveling mobile and web application. Its various
features make it convenient for travelers to plan their trip. Like booking hotel, restaurant
and flights according to your budget. It also provides a feature thing to do. In which a
user can find out the top tourist attractions in that area and essential things that the
traveler should do while he is in that area. Its vast number of guides provide extensive
information about the places you want to travel. It provides a forum with a huge
community to help the travelers in their travels

4.6 TravelSpend (TravelSpend)

It is an application for travelers to organize their budget and keep track of their expenses.
You can divide your daily expenses according to your budget and keep track of how
much you are spending. You can divide your budget to various things like restaurant,
accommodation, transportation, flights, entertainment and sightseeing you can even
create your own category. you can see what your daily budget is according to your total
budget and average money you spend daily. Its premium version also offers a feature to
keep track of your income.

4.7 Pakrism(Pakrism)
It is an application for trip planning and a forum for travelers to share their stories,
pictures and videos of their travels. Its main features include writing stories, uploading
pictures, creating travel albums, sharing their experience and making tripmates. It also
provides various information about any place or city a tourist wants to visit like its local
weather, accessible via (bike, car, foot), available foods, activities (fishing, Hiking),
photos and a Q&A section for guidance. Which helps tourists to be better prepared for the
journey.

Table 1: Literature Review (previous Applications)

Trip

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

No
PolarSteps

No

No

No

No

No

No

No

No
 Pakrism Travel Spend Trip Advisor Visit a City CoutchSurfing Trip Planner TripIt
Name of Application

Local Users No No No No No No No

Local Hosting No No No No Yes Yes No

Hotel Yes No (But keeps the Yes Yes No Yes Yes

Recommendation money track)

Cuisine Yes No (But keeps the Yes Yes No Yes No

Recommendation money track)

Transportation Yes No (But keeps the Yes Yes No Yes Yes

Information money track)

provided by locals Voting For history No No No No No No No

Hotel Rating No No Yes No No No No

Budget management No Yes Yes Yes No Yes No

 5. PROJECT GOAL
The goal of this project is to develop a mobile application for the travelers and the locals
in which traveler can find assistance using application as well as through travel guide.
This application is consisting of number of features like,

 Travel guide through application

 Find way to specific place
 Check for the best cuisines of any city
 Local users to add history and other information about their city.
 Recommendations for the travels
 Upvote and downvote options for other local users to authenticate the given history or
information by any local user

6. PROJECT TECHINCAL APPROACH AND METHODLOGY

To develop this application, we will make use of Waterfall model. This model is
composed of five phases. And the transition to the next phase only occurs if the already
running phase is completed. We chose this model, firstly because of the fixed timeline
and because it uses a clear structure which results in easily determinable milestones.

6.1 Requirements
In this phase we will gather the requirements for the application. The main sources of
requirements are

 Previous apps
 Questionnaire
The types of requirements that we will focus on are described as follows

6.1.1 User Requirements

There are the expectations in the application that the end user is concerned about. And we
have mainly two types of end users. The first one is the traveler who is the main focus,
the second one is the manager of a particular hotel or site and the last one is the local
contributor.

6.1.2 Functional Requirements

These requirements describe what the system must be able to do. They are the concern of
the development team as they have to comprehend and create the system.
6.1.3 Non–Functional Requirements
These requirements determine how well the system is achieving the goals or in other
words they represent the quality of the system. The non-functional requirements that we
will concentrate on are

 Usability
 Availability
 Reliability
 Recoverability
 Scalability

6.2 Design
In this phase various components of the system are designed as per the requirements
collected in the previous phases.

6.2.1 Front-end
Here the User interface will be designed. The system has multiple users and those with
different expectations from the system, so different views will be designed for their
interaction with the system.

6.2.2 Database and Entity Relationship

All the entities and their relationships in the system will be discovered, documented and
then database will be designed according to the discoveries.

6.2.3 System modeling

The various classes in the system will be discovered and described in a class diagram.
Furthermore, to elaborate the interactions of the objects, a sequence diagram will be
created.

6.2.4 System Architecture

The structural design of components of the system will be created. It will explain the
major components and subsystems along with their behavior.

6.2.5 Test Case

The test cases will be designed to verify if the system matches the previously gathered
requirements.
6.3 Implementation
In this phase the system will be implemented based on system designs. Initially small
units will be developed and then they will be integrated to form a complete system in the
next phase. There are different technologies available that are suitable to develop such
software but after doing research we have selected the following

6.3.1 Architecture:
Our Architecture is composed of two parts back-end and front-end. These components
are discussed in detail in the following parts.

Figure 2: Architecture

6.3.1.1 Front-end:
Client’s side UI components will be developed using Flutter. Flutter  is Google's portable
UI toolkit for crafting natively compiled applications for mobile. It is an Open-source UI
toolkit based on Dart a fast, object-oriented programming language which is easy to
learn. Flutter enables a smooth and easy cross-platform mobile app development.
6.3.1.2 Back-end:
We will be using Express framework of Node Js for the back end of web application. The
Flutter frontend and Express on Node js backend will be implemented along with the
cloud database Firebase. The main reason to choose this framework is its performance,
support, and wide community. (figure) shows the complete web application architecture
for this project.

6.3.2 Node Js Architecture:

The Node js architecture is an event-based JavaScript model. It is a platform that runs on
most proficient JavaScript Engine Chrome’s V8 Engine. The Express Node Js
Framework will be implemented on this architecture for better management and support
for different parts of application. We will implement Express js in MVC style.

6.3.2.1 Controller
This component of the system supervises all other components. It handles all the
activities and direction of all the control and data flows in the system.

6.3.2.2 Model
The model contains all the business logic of the system. Whether it is a workflow logic or
a data flow logic at high level the model will contain it and controller will be responsible
of making an interaction with it.

6.3.2.3 Services
Services are the functions that will perform certain tasks of system and help to
communicate with the external APIs and systems. Most of the features of the system will
be implemented as a service.

6.3.3 External APIs:

These are the third-party APIs that will be integrated in this system to perform certain
tasks. Such as: Google maps API.

6.4 Integration and Testing

In this phase the system will undergo testing through the designed test cases. The results
of tests, relevant test cases and inputs will be documented.
6.4.4 Unit Testing
The units of the system will be tested independently.

6.4.5 Integration Testing

A suitable method of integration will be selected. The units will be integrated gradually
and with each iteration testing will occur.

6.5 Deployment
Here the system will be deployed on the app stores.

7. PROJECT MILESTONES AND DELIVERABLES

After completion of this proposed system, we will have a complete end to end mobile application
for travelers. The following will be the project milestones and deliverables:

Table 2: Project Milestones and Deliverables

List of Deliverables

1. SRS Document
2. SDS Document
3. Android and IOS application fulfilling all possible requirements
4. Thesis Document

8. WORK DIVISION
Table 3: Work Division
 9. COSTING
Table 4: Costing

10. REFERENCES

City, V. A. Visit A City.

Holidify.com. Trip Planner: India's Best Travel App by Holidify.
Inc., C. Couchsurfing Travel App.
Pakistan - Contribution of travel and tourism to GDP as a share of GDP.
Pakistan Tourism Revenue.
Pakrism. Pakrism.
Seek Pakitan.
TravelSpend. TravelSpend - Track Travel Expenses & Trip Budget.
Tripadvisor. Tripadvisor Hotel, Flight & Restaurant Bookings.
TripIt, I. Trip It: Travel Planner.