Examination of travel and tourism development levels of the Mediterranean Countries with multicriteria decision making methods

This study aims to examine the tourism development levels of the countries in the Mediterranean region according to the Travel and Tourism Development Index (TTDI) published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) using multi-criteria decision-making methods. For this purpose, the study compares the Travel and Tourism Development levels of the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea according to 5 main criteria and 17 sub-criteria in the index. In this context, the importance weights of the index criteria were calculated by taking expert opinions with the AHP method and the Mediterranean countries with data in the index were ranked by TODIM and WASPAS methods. After the expert opinions, it was determined that the most important criteria were Environmental Conditions, Travel and Tourism Policies and Conditions, Travel and Tourism Demand Drivers, Infrastructure and Sustainability of Travel and Tourism. According to the results of the WASPAS method, the development levels of 8 countries differed from the WEF data, while according to the TODIM method, differences were observed in the rankings of 6 countries. In line with the results of the study, it is concluded that Mediterranean countries can maintain their ranking if they give more weight to important criteria that affect tourism development such as Environmental Conditions, Travel and Tourism Policies and Conditions and Travel and Tourism Demand Pressure.