Assessing Site Selection Criteria for Taiwan Lantern Festival by Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

Lantern Festival is the most important cultural event in Chinese ethnic society. With a tremendous economic and tourism value brought by the event activities, Taiwan cities are actively participating the bidding to host Taiwan Lantern Festival. Event site selection is arguably a complex issue because of a multitude of variables that are needed to be taken into consideration. Therefore, Delphi method and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) are used to develop an evaluation hierarchy for Taiwan Lantern Festival site selection. The proposed model not only provides the site selection criteria but also determines their relative importance of different criteria in influencing site selection decisions. Results show that tourism attraction and visitors' needs are the most important factors for selecting Taiwan Lantern Festival site and other important factors according to the rank of their weights are site environment, accessibility, and local support. The factors identified have implications for management practice, for site decision making by Taiwan Visitor Bureau and event organizers.