A Hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision Framework for Internet Technology Selection in Smart Tourism Systems

The digital transformation of tourist facilities requires careful selection of technologies that can provide secure, stable and scalable network infrastructure. Due to the possibility of application in different sectors with different specificities, the focus of the research was placed on the implementation of smart tourist services. A hybrid multi-criteria decision-making model based on PIPRECIA and MVA models was applied for the research. Based on the literature and the opinions of experts in the field, evaluation criteria such as bandwidth, latency, energy efficiency, security and privacy, scalability, costs and interoperability were defined, and internet technologies such as Li-Fi, Wi-Fi 7, Wi-Fi 6, private 5G networks, Ethernet-over-Power (EoP), NB-IoT and LoRaWAN were defined. The results obtained put the security and privacy criterion at the top (0.2253), followed by scalability (0.1952) and bandwidth (0.1624). The obtained results indicate that Wi-Fi 7 achieved the highest weighted score (4.2247), followed closely by Li-Fi (4.2177) and Wi-Fi 6 (4.0771). Wi-Fi 7 demonstrated particularly strong performance in scalability, interoperability and bandwidth, making it highly suitable for environments with high user density. Li-Fi achieved very high scores in security and latency, which makes it particularly appropriate for security-sensitive smart tourism environments. Lower-ranked technologies such as NB-IoT and LoRaWAN proved valuable for supporting IoT and monitoring functions, rather than as primary communication infrastructure. The proposed model has proven to be a flexible, transparent and practical tool for strategic decision-making in the field of smart tourism. In addition to the basic application presented in the paper, the model has the potential to be adapted to different contexts and expanded with additional criteria or new technologies. The proposed hybrid approach can serve as a useful decision-making tool for tourism managers, system engineers and urban planners who are looking for optimal solutions for the development of digital infrastructure.