A Fuzzy AHP-MAIRCA Model for Overtourism Assessment: The Case of Malaga Province

Josefa García Mestanza,Rim Bakhat

doi:10.3390/su13116394

Josefa García Mestanza, Rim Bakhat

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13116394

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Abstract

The unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 has placed the tourism sector in an unfavourable position. It has altered the reality of destinations worldwide, changing the paradigm of tourism and showing an unusual scenario within the tourism sector, the undertourism. This paper confirms how this global pandemic has put the Spanish tourism sector at a halt, making it essential to establish public–private response strategies that reactivate it and, in turn, avoid overtourism in the post-COVID-19 scenario. This is done to emphasise the necessity of embracing an adapted systematic approach that entails a realistic set of factors to quantitatively measure the impact of overtourism on the local community. In this sense, a fuzzy modified hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach is proposed, combining the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) model, the multi-attribute ideal–real comparative analysis (MAIRCA) model, and the sensitivity analysis. The modified F-AHP model is used to identify the criteria importance. For the final ranking of the considered alternative municipalities, the modified F-MAIRCA is applied. To validate the applicability of the proposed approach, we designated the province of Malaga (Costa del Sol) as an empirical study. The findings show that the municipality of Nerja was the most affected by overtourism in the pre-pandemic scenario, and today it is found in undertourism. This calls for transformative decisions of fully engaged tourism policymakers and practitioners to thrive in the post-COVID-19 tourism scenarios in terms of sustainability.

Highlights

With over 70% of the borders of destinations closed to international tourism and restrictions on 100% of world destinations [1] and the socio-economic unparalleled impact caused by COVID-19, on a global scale, the pandemic has begun to make its effects tangible, reaching ‘zero tourism’ in most tourist destinations
The present study proposes a modified fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model, supports the evaluation process by using triangular fuzzy numbers to translate the judgments of experts, and proposes the geometrical mean method to obtain the value of the total weights
The present paper aims at focusing on specific regions that suffered from overtourism before the COVID-19 outbreak and seeking to revive tourism activity after the crisis in Spain through a series of realistic applications

Summary

Introduction

With over 70% of the borders of destinations closed to international tourism and restrictions on 100% of world destinations [1] and the socio-economic unparalleled impact caused by COVID-19, on a global scale, the pandemic has begun to make its effects tangible, reaching ‘zero tourism’ in most tourist destinations. More than 90% of air traffic, more than 300 million jobs, as well as entire tourist destinations have been paralysed [2]. In this scenario, the estimated international tourist arrivals point to a decrease of between 60% and 80% to add losses to 1.20 trillion US dollars [3]. The COVID-19 pandemic has put 75 million jobs at risk in travel and tourism [6] as the aviation passenger revenues drop

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