Abstract

Tourism  is  the  world’s  one  of  fastest  growing  industry  and the largest service sector industry. It is also considered as one  of  the  biggest  industry  in  Turkish  economy.  Choosing  a  travel destination is a kind of multi criteria decision making problem.  Relative  importance  factors  across  locations  play  a  crucial role for ranking the destinations. There are several attributes,  including  inherited  resources,  transportation,  environment, health/medical facilities, accommodation, adventure activities, distance to airport, quality of hotels/hostels, distance to city center, distance to seaside, benefit/cost, variety of souvenirs, number of five/four/three star hotels, forest‐coverage rate, air quality, average temperature, quality of airport etc. This study  comprised  of  11  destination  alternatives  in  three  cities  (Antalya, İzmir, and Muğla). These destination alternatives are Alanya,  Belek,  Bodrum,  Cesme,  Datca,  Fethiye,  Kas,  Kemer,  Kusadasi, Marmaris and Side. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and  Technique  for  Order  Preference  by  Similarity  to  Ideal  Solution (TOPSIS) are multi‐criteria decision making (MCDM) methodologies.  They  have  been  used  extensively  for  analyzing  complex decisions. These approaches can be used to help decision‐makers for prioritizing alternatives and determining the optimal alternative.

Keywords: AHP, MCDM, TOPSIS, Tourism Destination Competitiveness/Ranking