RESILIENCE ENHANCEMENT OF TOURISM SUPPLY CHAIN AMID UNCERTAIN SITUATIONS: DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, A CASE IN POINT

Derived from Supply Chain Management (SCM), Tourism Supply Chain (TSC) is the integration of tourism-related activities, and is more sensitive to an uncertain event like a natural disaster due to its high dependency on nature. Moreover, compared to developed countries, the TSC in developing countries like Pakistan is more susceptible to natural disasters and disruptions owing to the country’s weak infrastructure. As a result, the tourism sector in developing countries faces serious threats because of their weak resistance to uncertain natural disasters. Therefore, this study aims to enhance the resilience of the TSC in developing countries by evaluating different threats in top tourism hotspots using the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP). Then, based on the FAHP results, Fuzzy Quality Function Deployment (FQFD) is used to propose the best risk mitigation strategies to deal with those threats. Furthermore, the study also estimates the cost of implementing the top mitigation strategy in developing countries to check the practicality of the results. The results showed that planning and implementation of emergency response is the best strategy to deal with natural disasters in Pakistan. Similarly, real-time monitoring and forecasting ranked as the second-best strategy to enhance TSC resilience. The use of FAHP-based FQFD in the area of tourism and improving its resilience, especially from the lens of developing countries is the prime novelty of the study.