Open Access

ARTICLE

Conditional Generative Adversarial Network-Based Travel Route Recommendation

Sunbin Shin¹, Luong Vuong Nguyen², Grzegorz J. Nalepa^3,4, Paulo Novais⁵, Xuan Hau Pham⁶, Jason J. Jung^1,*

1 Department of Computer Engineering, Chung-Ang University, 84 Heukseok-ro, Seoul, 06974, Republic of Korea
2 Department of Artificial Intelligence, FPT University, Da Nang Campus, Da Nang, 550000, Vietnam
3 Jagiellonian Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (JAHCAI), Institute of Applied Computer Science, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, 30-348, Poland
4 Department of Information Technology, School of Information Technology, Halmstad University, Halmstad, 30118, Sweden
5 ALGORITMI Research Centre, School of Engineering, Universidade do Minho, Braga, 4710-057, Portugal
6 Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering-Information Technology, Quang Binh University, Dong Hoi City, 510000, Vietnam

* Corresponding Author: Jason J. Jung. Email:

Computers, Materials & Continua 2026, 86(1), 1-40. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2025.070613

Received 20 July 2025; Accepted 28 August 2025; Issue published 10 November 2025

Abstract

Recommending personalized travel routes from sparse, implicit feedback poses a significant challenge, as conventional systems often struggle with information overload and fail to capture the complex, sequential nature of user preferences. To address this, we propose a Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (CGAN) that generates diverse and highly relevant itineraries. Our approach begins by constructing a conditional vector that encapsulates a user’s profile. This vector uniquely fuses embeddings from a Heterogeneous Information Network (HIN) to model complex user-place-route relationships, a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) to capture sequential path dynamics, and Neural Collaborative Filtering (NCF) to incorporate collaborative signals from the wider user base. This comprehensive condition, further enhanced with features representing user interaction confidence and uncertainty, steers a CGAN stabilized by spectral normalization to generate high-fidelity latent route representations, effectively mitigating the data sparsity problem. Recommendations are then formulated using an Anchor-and-Expand algorithm, which selects relevant starting Points of Interest (POI) based on user history, then expands routes through latent similarity matching and geographic coherence optimization, culminating in Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP)-based route optimization for practical travel distances. Experiments on a real-world check-in dataset validate our model’s unique generative capability, achieving scores ranging from 0.163 to 0.305, and near-zero scores between 0.002 and 0.022. These results confirm the model’s success in generating novel travel routes by recommending new locations and sequences rather than replicating users’ past itineraries. This work provides a robust solution for personalized travel planning, capable of generating novel and compelling routes for both new and existing users by learning from collective travel intelligence.

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Keywords

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