Determining the Competitiveness of Spa-Centers in Order to Achieve Sustainability Using a Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Model

Abstract

Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) possess many natural resources that can be exploited for the development of medical tourism. The offer of medical tourism in B&H is focused on spa tourism. B&H has 16 registered spa-centers offering different types of services. This study provides a complete overview of the assessment of the current state of spa-centres using expert decision-making and methods of multi-criteria analysis. An innovative and novel MCDM model based on integration of the FUCOM (full consistency method) and fuzzy MARCOS (Measurement of Alternatives and Ranking according to COmpromise Solution) methods was used. The model consists of 16 alternatives and eight sustainable criteria. The results of this research have shown that the spa-centers of Ilidža near Sarajevo, Fojnica and Vrućica have the best assessments of the current situation and prerequisites for sustainable business. These spa-centers should be a benchmark to other spas providing direction on how to improve their business to be more sustainable and competitive in the market. These results were confirmed by a sensitivity analysis with two approaches used. The first approach was to compare the results obtained by the fuzzy MARCOS method with other fuzzy methods, and the second approach was to examine the influence of the application of different weights on the final ranking of the spa. The results of this study can serve spa-canter managers to understand the position of their spa-centers in order to exploit advantages they have and eliminate the shortcomings to improve their business.

Locating a disinfection facility for hazardous healthcare waste in the COVID-19 era: a novel approach based on Fermatean fuzzy ITARA-MARCOS and random forest recursive feature elimination algorithm

“…Unfortunately, the MARCOS method has not been extended before under the Fermatean fuzzy environment, significantly improving its applicability in real-life contradictory decision-making environments. On the other hand, the MARCOS method has been employed for solving various decision-making problems in agriculture (Maksimović et al, 2021), civil engineering (Celik & Gul, 2021), computer science , economics (Arsu & Ayçin, 2021), energy management (Deveci et al, 2021;Gong et al, 2021;Pamucar, Iordache, et al, 2021), human resources management (Stević & Brković, 2020), logistics (Chakraborty et al, 2020;Ulutaş et al, 2020), medicine (Biswas et al, in press), tourism (Mijajlović et al, 2020), and transportation engineering (Bakır et al, 2021;Bouraima et al, 2021;Pamucar, Ecer, et al, 2021;Simić et al, 2020;Stanković et al, 2020). However, not a single previous study utilized the MARCOS method in the WM research area.…”

Regional Aircraft Selection With Fuzzy Piprecia and Fuzzy Marcos: A Case Study of the Turkish Airline Industry

“…The basic computational principle of the technique relies on the ideal (ID) and anti-ideal (AI) solutions. Accordingly, it takes into account the relationships between ideal and anti-ideal points and alternatives [37,47]. The MARCOS method, like the TOPSIS method, defines the alternative that is nearest to the ideal point and farthest from the anti-ideal point as the best-ranked solution [48,49].…”

“…The F-MARCOS approach was first used to analyze road traffic risk in the literature [37]. Following this, it has been successfully applied in many studies such as determining the level of safety on the roads [50], selecting sustainable suppliers [48], evaluating the competitiveness of spa centers [47], and evaluating the safety levels of railway crossings [44]. The F-MARCOS method includes the following steps [47,48]:…”

“…As with other MCDM techniques, a decision matrix is constructed in which the m alternatives and n criteria are present. Table 4 can be used for DMs to evaluate alternatives [47,48]. Step 2 Extent the initial fuzzy decision matrix.…”

Prioritization of R&D Projects Using Fermatean Fuzzy MARCOS Method

“…Ilieva et al [5] presented fuzzy MAR-COS methods to order cloud storage systems. In the literature, there are also hybrid MCDM methods such as FUCOM [6,7], fuzzy BWM [8], fuzzy PIPRECIA [9] for determine the values of the criteria weights and fuzzy MARCOS for evaluation of alternatives. Gong et al [1] developed a hybrid decision-making framework that determine attributes' weights by the interval type-2 fuzzy BWM and present to rank alternatives by an interval type-2 MARCOS method.…”