Multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods in the hotel assessment in conference tourism

Abstract

The organisation of various events requires appropriate infrastructure. In the case of conference tourism, which concerns events, aimed at increasing the participants’ knowledge, the proper hotel infrastructure is essential. In the conditions of a dynamically changing environment, hotel management requires making rational decisions based on an optimal choice among available alternatives that meet a set of specific goals. Due to the multiplicity of hotel offers in the context of their level of suitability for conference tourism, the choice of the most appropriate object for the events’ organisation is extremely difficult. One of the proposals enabling creation, justification and transformation conference tourism preferences into a specific choice, taking into account the complexity of the analysed activity or object is the application of the multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. The article presents the possibility of using a multiple-criteria approach to assess the level of suitability of hotels for the needs of conference tourism. The study was carried out on a group of hotels located in Szczecin (Poland). The research procedure consisted of three stages: identification of factors determining hotel suitability for the conference tourism; verification of the coherence of the adopted factors (criteria evaluation); construction of the ranking of selected hotels according to the adopted criteria. The study uses: the multiple-criteria methods (AHP, TOPSIS) and the desk research method in the form of literature analysis of the tourism economics. In addition, logical operations methods (mainly deductions and inductions) and the method of observation were used (especially when referring to practical aspects).