Title: A fuzzy MCDM approach for choosing a tourism destination in Portugal

Authors: Tolga Genç; José António Filipe

Addresses: Atatürk Faculty of Education, Near East University, Nicosia, Cyprus; School of Business, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland ' Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, BRU-IUL, ISTAR-IUL, Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026, Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract: In this paper, it is intended to create a methodology in order to have a multi criteria approach for choosing a tourist destination region or place. Involving a gridline scheme for selection a tourism destination, several criteria will be defined in order to create the basis for the utilisation of the model for electing a destination. The first step involves the description of the features of the possible destinations like Lisbon, Alentejo, Algarve and Alto Douro Region and in which the methodology may be applied. Tourism destination selection is a multi criteria decision making (MCDM) problem including both multi alternatives and criteria and has a great importance for many travellers. To do so, we use the fuzzy technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), an MCDM method based on fuzzy sets in deciding about a tourism destination. Generally, it is difficult to model the real life problems with crisp data. For that reason, we take advantage of using linguistic variables to select the best tourist destination in Portugal.

Keywords: multicriteria decision making; MCDM; tourism industry; tourist destinations; fuzzy TOPSIS; Portugal; fuzzy logic; destination selection; linguistic variables.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2016.073688

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2016 Vol.10 No.1, pp.23 - 44

Received: 13 Jul 2015
Accepted: 02 Sep 2015
Published online: 15 Dec 2015 *

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