Tourism hospitality assessment based on GIS multi criteria decision analysis in Tabriz city

Nowadays the tourism industry has turned as critical section of the economy. In order to extend this industry, developing the required infrastructure can be considered as very important issue. The main objective of this research is to analysis the urban infrastructure and tourism hospitality in Tabriz city. For this to happen, variety of data (e.g. population, social, economic, urban infrastructure, tourism hospitality and etc) where taken into account. The research methodology was established based on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and its spatial analysis such as multi criteria decision analysis MCDA. The relevant criteria were ranked using analytical hierarchy process. Accordingly, the sensitivity and uncertainty analysis using Mont Carlo simulation and global sensitivity analysis were applied to identify and remove uncertain weights. Results were achieved using GIS aggregation functions for mapping the tourism hospitality radiances assessment in Tabriz city. Results indicated that the central section of the city (e.g. Bazar of Tabriz) has already sufficiently developed from the tourism hospitality perspective. While, the suburb area, where tourism destinations are distributed (e.g. Magbartolashara) still required further attention from the decision makers and authorities. Results of this research are great of important for identifying the critical issues and challenges for tourism industry in Tabriz city. Results are also represented a new approach for GIS based tourism hospitality assessment by means of proposing a sufficient methodology with critical steps such as sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. The proposed methodology can be applied for future GIS based tourism mapping.