A Multi-Criteria Assessment of Green Tourism Potential in Rural Regions: The Role of Green Skills and Institutional Readiness

This paper assesses the green tourism readiness of six EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe—Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania—using a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model. As tourism sectors face increasing pressure to align with the European Green Deal and sustainability goals, integrating green skills, environmental protection, and institutional governance becomes essential. The study applies a three-step framework that combines the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Best-Worst Method (BWM), and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to evaluate national performance across four criteria: natural capital, rural infrastructure, governance readiness, and green skills in vocational education and training (VET). Results show that environmental sustainability and governance are the dominant enablers of green tourism transformation, with Slovenia and Croatia leading in overall readiness. Although green skills have a lower relative weight, their integration significantly strengthens performance in more advanced systems. The hybrid model demonstrated methodological robustness through sensitivity and consistency checks. This research contributes to both methodological innovation and evidence-based policymaking by offering a replicable tool for evaluating sustainable tourism development in transition economies. It provides actionable insights for aligning education, tourism, and environmental policy within the broader EU green transition framework.