Trip To Go

Abstract

This dissertation presents the design, development, and evaluation of TripToGo, a smart-tourism web application tailored to the Saudi Arabian context. Tourism is a cornerstone of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, yet existing digital platforms offer limited support for fully customised, end-to-end itinerary planning. TripToGo addresses this gap by enabling users to generate personalised daily itineraries based on their preferences, including selected cities, budget, travel duration, and interests. The system was developed using Django for the backend, PostgreSQL for data management, and Bootstrap for the user interface. A service-oriented architecture was adopted to separate concerns between itinerary generation, database persistence, and frontend presentation. Key technical challenges included implementing realistic scheduling of meals and activities and ensuring accommodation logic was both budget-aware and clearly represented in the interface. These were resolved through model extensions, time-slot management functions, and dedicated budget allocation algorithms. Testing was conducted at three levels: unit testing of itinerary generation logic and error handling, manual testing of interface components, and user testing with ten participants. The user evaluation employed the System Usability Scale (SUS), achieving a mean score of 78, which exceeds the industry benchmark of 68 and indicates above-average usability. Qualitative feedback highlighted the system's intuitive design while suggesting future enhancements such as transportation integration and booking functionality. The results demonstrate that TripToGo successfully delivers a minimum viable product (MVP) that supports intelligent, user-centred itinerary planning for Saudi Arabia. The project establishes a robust foundation for future expansion into a comprehensive travel ecosystem, incorporating real-time data, adaptive budgeting, and booking integration capabilities.