A software bench for the production of multimedia tourism applicationsA software bench for the production of multimedia tourism applications Πλήρης Δημοσίευση σε Συνέδριο Conference Full Paper 2015-10-051996enModern information technology offers great opportunities to promote tourism and has the potential to become soon the most effective means of advertisement and information dissemination. During the last years, MUSIC has undertaken a number of competitive research and development projects in the area of Multimedia Tourist Information Systems. A powerful model has been elaborated that supports the detailed description of areas of tourist interest with their sites and facilities hierarchically organized. It has also been established an extensive multimedia information base for the region of Crete. Software tools have been developed to maintain this information base and create virtual navigations, and hypermedia presentations with the incorporation of detailed and accurate geographic maps, diagrams and architectural sketches. In addition, commercially available tools have been integrated into the system for multimedia data processing. All these tools constitute an integrated authoring environment, a Software Bench, that supports rapid development of Multimedia Tourism Applications.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/18-28Information and Communication Technologies in TourismProceedings of the International Conference in Innsbruck Christodoulakis Stavros Χριστοδουλακης Σταυρος Kazasis Fotis Καζασης Φωτης Moumoutzis Nektarios Μουμουτζης Νεκταριος Servetas A. G. Petridis P. Springer Verlag Similarity query Multimedia object Object orient database Tourist information Functional interface