Multi-criteria decision theoritic approach for tour package selection using fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS methods: A case study on Cox's bazar

Abstract

The global tourism business is expanding as more people travel and visit new locations both abroad and locally. Cox's Bazar is the longest natural unbroken sea beach in the world situated in Bangladesh accommodating millions of foreign and local tourists every year. This has been a very popular destination with various activities and beautiful natural attraction spots. There are numerous Cox's Bazar trip packages available for travelers to choose from. Compared to the large number of tour packages found online for this destination at present, this paper proposes a methodology to help the tourists to select a tour package based on their likings and different criteria. A decision-making selection process has been proposed using the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process(FAHP) and TOPSIS method to rank the packages based on 12 criteria that are closely knitted to the preference of users during the time of tour selection. A dataset of 100 alternative tour packages has been built with existing tour packages found from online travel agency websites and multiple decision makers are used to make pairwise criterion comparison. The tourists/users input fuzzy numbers, and then using the proposed methodology a ranking of all the alternatives is provided to aid them in choosing the optimal tour package.