Measuring priorities of sustainable post-pandemic tourism policy factors using novel fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach

Abstract

In recent years, research on tourism risks and public health safety has emerged as one of the most pressing issues in the tourism industry. This issue arose as a result of the unanticipated calamity that shook the entire world, affecting several businesses, conspicuously the travel industry, and causing nations throughout the world to experience severe and catastrophic economic collapse. The multiple interwoven elements of this industry, that is, the direct and indirect effects of the global outbreak on tourism, notably on opportunities for employment, gathered traction in the interim. Considering this, our research intends to effectively deal with the aforementioned difficulties by laying out sustainable policies that can perhaps be utilized to mitigate risks in such unforeseen situations, which could be highly beneficial in the near future. In order to achieve this goal, a knowledge-based fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) strategy was utilized to prioritize and enhance the important networks within the travel industry. Furthermore, to deal with uncertain information, a newly developed spherical fuzzy set was combined with the analytical hierarchy process and weighted aggregated sum product assessment to examine and evaluate the five different dimensions considered.