Multi-Objective Fuzzy Tourist Trip Design Problem with Heterogeneous Preferences and Sustainable Itineraries

Abstract

Tourism has direct and indirect implications for CO2 emissions. Therefore, it is necessary to develop tourism management based on sustainable tourism, mainly in the transport process. Tourist itinerary planning is a complex process that plays a crucial role in tourist management. This type of problem, called the tourist trip design problem, aims to build personalised itineraries. However, planning tends to be biased towards group travel with heterogeneous preferences. Additionally, much of the information needed for planning is vague and imprecise. In this paper, a new model for tourist route planning is developed to minimise CO2 emissions from transportation and generate an equitable profit for tourists. In addition, the model also plans group routes with heterogeneous preferences, selects transport modes, and addresses uncertainty from fuzzy optimisation. A set of numerical tests was carried out with theoretical and real-world instances. The experimentation develops different scenarios to compare the results obtained by the model and analyse the relationship between the objectives. The results demonstrate the influence of the objectives on the solutions, the direct and inverse relationships between objectives, and the fuzzy nature of the problem.