An Integrative Decision Support System for Improving Tourism Logistics and Public Transportation in Thailand

ABSTRACT

Tourism planning and development requires proper evaluation of the logistical aspect. However, studies that focus on both tourism logistics and public transportation are scarce. In this paper, we develop a two-stage, decision support system (DSS) to enhance the quality of tourism logistics and public transportation services. Initially, by using the mixed methods research based on quantitative and qualitative analyses, influencing factors on satisfaction levels and tourists’ choices of destinations are studied. Next, transportation services and routes are analyzed using the travelling salesman problem (TSP) modeling to improve the current services based on the data collected from the first stage. An application of the TSP with minimized traveling distance helps to enhance the decision planning in an integrated way. Finally, the proposed tool is verified using two case studies of existing tourism logistics and minibuses in Ubon Ratchathani province in Thailand. The results from this study show the applicability of the proposed approach and can be used to improve the quality and routes of the existing system.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed methods research
• traveling salesman problem
• decision support system
• tourism logistics
• public transportation

Acknowledgement

This work is supported by Faculty of Engineering, Ubon Ratchathani University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).