Assessing Sustainable Rural Community Tourism Using the AHP and TOPSIS Approaches under Fuzzy Environment

Abstract

Tourism is currently a sector that is growing into an important and significant world activity. The development of an area where the tourist destination located in affects the growth of the tourism. In addition, the success of tourist destinations are influenced by their relative competitiveness; hence, they do compete each other to offer the best service to satisfy their customers. Rural tourism in Indonesia is believed as emerging business since there are abundant sites located in rural area that offers fascinating attractions to the visitors. This study aims to evaluate the rural tourism using sustainable indicators, namely, service quality, facilities, management system, and outcome. A combination of fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS are employed to select five rural tourism in Central Java Province. Result shows that service quality is considered as the most important attribute with weight of 28.6%, while Dieng is named for the excellent rural tourism. This finding might offer the service providers with valuable insights into the attribute that reflects customers’ perceptions about rural tourism; also to position their services based on their competitors.