Using an AHP Matrix to Take a Decision Regarding Places to Visit

INTRODUCTION

Location is important, mainly because it helps others explore the world around them. The topic chosen for this type of feature is the preference when choosing a place to visit. Students are a bundle of people who are ready to set sail in new places for either education, relaxation, entertainment or benefits that can pursue its goal.

The main idea is providing feedback from them to see on what grounds do they visit a location when it comes to a certain condition, time or offer. Is the visit for a cultural condition in order to learn more about the certain place chosen? Is the visit an offer that persuaded students to follow in order to have an opportunity to see something different? Those are one of the many questions brought into discussion to learn characteristics of the human behavior exploring different aspects from every each individual.

So in order to relate more of the issue discussed above when choosing a place to visit, the students have a set of alternative locations to which they choose, depending on their preference, the appropriate features.

The decision-making process system according to the alternatives and criteria available represent the objective of this subject with the following Analytics Hierarchy Process.

All steps are in the following manner:

State the decision problem and create an AHP framework.

Develop a survey in which to be answered by a minimum of three interested participants, based on the criteria and alternatives from the AHP structure.

Perform a comparison through the scales of Saaty, Ma Zheng and Linguistic Model.

Processing data through decision matrices and establish the priority vector, aggregate the final results in Gauss program.

Conclusions.

THE DECISION DILEMMA

Choosing a place is not easy as it sounds, especially in the situation faced on the limited budget that most students of a faculty has. When it comes to picking a place, certain aspects such as the weather, cultural knowledge, environmental conditions, offers and activities comes forth as those criteria to which is considered as a priority for assuming its gains or interests.

“Places to Visit” is the main decision dilemma, it includes the criteria and alternatives in the problem. The locations discussed for the students are: Islands, Historical Sights, Mountains and Natural Wonders. The criteria was also mentioned above, but with another recap we have the following: Weather, Cultural Knowledge, Environmental Conditions, Tourism Offers and Entertainment Activities.

THE SURVEY

The survey will be getting feedback from several students enrolled in the 3rd year at the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest, who will be all renamed as Respondent #1, Respondent #2 and Respondent #3. The survey’s purpose is to support the student’s decision when it comes in choosing an appropriate location.

Scale Equally important Weakly more important Moderately more important Moderately plus more important Strongly more important Strongly plus more important Very strongly more important Highly more important Extremely more important

Saaty 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Linguistic S0 S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8

Ma

Zheng 1 9/8 9/7 9/6 9/5 9/4 9/3 9/2 9

Saaty’s scale will be used in the survey, it conveys a 9-step scale for establishing the intensity of the preferences and for avoiding absurdity or unrealistic opinions. Also the Linguistic and Ma Zheng scales will be used when it conveys from Saaty Scale. In the Gauss program however, all the comparison will be based only from the Saaty model.