Application of geographic information systems and multicriteria decision analysis in selecting suitable sites for rural tourism development.

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Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis
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Date

2017-12-11

Department

Major/Subject

Geoinformation Technology

Mcode

IA3002

Degree programme

Master’s Programme in Geoinformatics (GIS)

Language

en

Pages

44

Series

Abstract

In Mexico, there is a high failure rate of most rural tourism activities which has been attributed to inadequate planning and choice of tourism destinations. This study seeks to integrate techniques in Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to provide a complete decision support in site selection for rural tourism development. Tourism expert’s opinions and literature study were used to select rural tourism factors which includes: Landcover, attractions, cultural elements, facilities and services, population density as well as relief features. These factors were represented in GIS in the form of criterion maps and preferences for criteria were evaluated with the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. A questionnaire for tourism experts were used to decide the importance of criteria in a pairwise comparison. A final Suitability analysis was performed using generated criterion weights from AHP in a GIS environment. The study yielded a tourism suitability map where areas of High suitability constituted about 7.6% of the study area. Average suitability areas were found to be about 11.6% of the region and 48.5% constituted areas of low suitability. High suitability areas were found to be near urban areas with good accessibility and services which were the most important tourism factors. The result in this study showed the integrated approach of determining suitable sites for rural tourism development can aid decision-making process.

Description

Supervisor

Virrantaus, Kirsi

Thesis advisor

Kallio, Marko
Obombo Magio, Kennedy

Keywords

multicriteria decision analysis, geographic information systems, analytical hierarchy process, rural tourism, site suitability, map overlay

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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201712188205

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[dipl] Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu / ENG