Selecting investment strategies for European Tourism Industry using the hybrid decision making approach based on interval type-2 fuzzy sets

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Dinçer, Hasan^{; *} | Yüksel, Serhat

Affiliations: School of Business, Istanbul Medipol University, South Campus, Istanbul, Turkey

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Hasan Dinçer, School of Business, Istanbul Medipol University, South Campus, 34810, Istanbul, Turkey. Tel.: +90 444 85 44; Fax: +90 212 521 23 77; E-mail: hdincer@medipol.edu.tr.

Abstract: The selection of investment strategies is one of prominent issues for the service industries in the competitive market environment. The aim of the study is to evaluate the investment strategies for the European tourism industry using a hybrid decision making approach based on the interval type-2 fuzzy sets. For this purpose, a set of criteria and dimensions for the investments strategies of the European tourism is proposed. Interval type-2 fuzzy DEMATEL is applied to weight the criteria and dimensions and interval type-2 fuzzy MOORA is used for selecting the best investment strategies for the European tourism industry. The novelty of the study is to propose a set of investment strategies for the European tourism and the extended methods for DEMATEL and MOORA under the fuzzy environment. A novel hybrid approach is also proposed to the decision-making process based on the interval type-2 fuzzy sets. The major results are summarized as European countries should firstly focus on increasing the number of touristic facilities in the coast line to attract the attention of the tourists. Similarly, it can also be beneficial for these countries make more private security investment for the tourists to feel more secured while visiting historical places. Owing to these strategies, it can be possible to develop European tourism industry.

Keywords: Tourism, investment strategies, interval type-2 fuzzy DEMATEL, interval type-2 fuzzy MOORA, industry

DOI: 10.3233/JIFS-182773

Journal: Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 1343-1356, 2019