MULTICRITERIAL EVALUATION MODEL FOR THE MAGICAL

PEOPLES PROGRAM AS A NEW TOURIST PRODUCT

MARTIN LEON SANTIESTEBAN

University Autonomous of Occidente. Blvd. Lola Beltrán, K m 1.5.
Culiacán, Sinaloa, 80000, Mexico

JUAN CARLOS LEYVA LOPEZ

University Autonomous of Occidente. Blvd. Lola Beltrán, K m 1.5.
Culiacán, Sinaloa, 80000, Mexico

A magical town in Mexico is a locality whose attributes are unique, symbolic,

customary and represent authentic history, indicating an opportunity for tourism
development considering the current motivations of travelers. This article presents
a multicriteria model to evaluate potential tourist localities to receive the distinctive
signification of “magical town” in Mexico. This model is created based on twelve
dimensions. The use of this approach makes it possible to evaluate and compare the
tourist destinations that wish to be recognized effectively under this nomination.
The model is designed based on a multi-criteria ranking problem.

Introduction

The Magical Towns Program (Programa de Pueblos Mágicos, PPM) of the

Secretary of Tourism (SECTUR) of Mexico is one of the proposed strategies to
promote “expressive forms and develop intellectual, moral and emotional physical
values; therefore, tourism cannot be static. Tourism as an economic and social
activity must respond to the movements, changes and demands that the human being
requests” (SECTUR [1]). In this sense, the PPM emphasizes sustainability, and the
central axis of this tourist activity is essentially to conserve the natural and cultural
heritage of the designated place.

Valdez, Maldonado and Maldonado [3] note that, with the PPM, the aim is to
support typical villages with unique cultural attractions and thus encourage the
conservation and improvement of their urban image and identity. In this sense,
SECTUR [1] defines “a Magical Town as a locality that has symbolic attributes,
legends, stories, transcendent facts, an everyday life, in short, a magic that emanates
in each of its sociocultural manifestations and that currently represents a great
opportunity to take advantage of its tourist potential”.

In the context of the competitiveness discourse that permeates tourist activity at the
global level, based on a federal initiative, a pilot program was undertaken to identify
the factors of competitiveness in diverse destinations across the country, among
them, magical towns. In this sense, SECTUR proposed the following objectives: 1.
Structure a complementary and diversified tourism offer to the market,
fundamentally based on the historical-cultural and natural attributes of the localities.
2. Take advantage of the singularity of the localities for the generation and
innovation of tourist products for various segments. 3. Promote greater spending for
the benefit of the host community. 4. Attain excellence for the tourist services of
the localities. 5. Professionalize the human factor of the localities. 6. Encourage
investment by the three levels of government (federal, state and municipal) and the
private sector. 7. Strengthen the tourist proposal for Mexico. 8. Promote the
consolidation of growing destinations. 9. Support the reconversion of mature
localities. 10. Constitute tourism as a tool for sustainable development of the
localities incorporated into the Program (SECTUR, [2]).

Due to the multi-criteria nature of this strategy, a model is proposed that adequately
characterizes the multiple factors that this type of tourist destination possesses and
allows the decision-maker to design a new tourism product appropriate to the
strategies embodied in the PSST.

This document is organized as follows: in the next section, the literature review
discusses some relevant studies on the use of multicriteria methods. The
methodological proposal to be developed is then presented, and the multicriteria
evaluation model for the ADPM is proposed. Finally, conclusions and future work
are discussed.

Literature Review

From an ecotourism perspective, Castro, Castro, Corral, Espin and Zambrano (16)
note that it is important to create and design experiences that are unique,
unrepeatable, personal, and occur in a quality environment, as well as generate
recreational tourism activities and rural tourism characterized by quality in terms of
free use of time and the quality of the geographical and social environment.
Martinez (17) notes that tourism transforms the economic, social, cultural and
environmental spheres of the host communities, so it is necessary to build planning
processes that account for the dynamics of development, management and
supervision of the tourism and hotel sector. We hope that tourism in the region does
not violate the principles of sustainability and natural conservation.

For its part, in Mexico, an evaluation model created by the SECTUR is currently
used to assign the distinctive emblem of magical town. However, it was not possible
to find evidence of the existence of a technically and scientifically validated
evaluation model.
 Regarding the studies with Multicriteria Analysis Methods for Decision Making
(MCDA), Álvarez, León, Gastélum and Vega [4] performed an empirical analysis
of the competitiveness of the cities of Sinaloa, Mexico, using this method of
ordering. Leyva, Gastélum and Urías [5] developed the application of a multi-
criteria approach to compare economic sectors using the case of the State of Sinaloa,
Mexico. Peng and Tzeng [6] explored strategies to improve the competitiveness of
tourism by implementing a Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) model and
combining the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL)
based on the Analytic Network Process Method (ANP). Mazanec, Wober and Zins
[7] developed an investigation in relation to the competitiveness of the tourist
destination that gathered the compilations of the competitiveness factors included
by Ritchie and Crouch [8]. With these empirical studies, they made
recommendations on how to adjust strategy in future research on tourist
destinations.

In this way, considering the breadth and variety of the indicators they use to
measure the magical towns used, it is evident that the decisions faced by tourism
planners usually include variables that are difficult to measure directly, and even if
all the variables can be accurately measured, there are still serious problems
impeding the gathering of numerical measures of relative importance of the decision
variables according to Crouch [9].

Multi-criteria evaluation model.

This evaluation model proposal for the assignment of the magical town distinctive
emblem is intended to be a decision process with multiple attributes. The method is
based on ELECTRE III and is based on the approach of Bartolini, Gallerani,
Samoggia and Viaggi (2005). A proposal is made to conduct the analysis process,
which can be used for decision-making purposes. Thus, the multicriteria analysis
approach requires two phases: 1) the construction of the model and 2) the use of the
model.
 Diagram of the Multicriteria Decision Aid (MCDA)
Input Multicriterion Aggregation Procedure Output

Modeling
Information process Aggregation Recommendation
(data) (calculation) (result)
(interfaces)

Construction Exploitation

Source: prepared based on Bartolini et al., 2005.

In this sense, the procedure shortens the multicriteria decision support process, the
function of which is to indicate in greater detail this approach, which is executed
through a series of steps identified as follows: a) Definition of the problem, b)
identification of alternatives, c) identification of evaluation criteria, d) obtaining
information and measuring evaluation criteria, e) normalization of information, f)
determination of weights, parameters of indifference and preference, g) aggregation
and calculation of the evaluation parameters, h) sensitivity analysis, i) interpretation
and analysis of the data, and j) final ordering.

With this sequence, an order can be established in the development of the problem,
from its argumentation to its conclusion, where one of the basic characteristics of
the multicriteria analysis is to compare alternatives based on a series of criteria.
Therefore, the test to accept aSb's assertion is implemented using two principles:

The principle of concordance, which requires that most of the criteria, after
considering their relative importance, be in favor of the affirmation – the principle
of the majority (Leyva, [14]). That is, the first step is to develop a measure of

agreement that is included in the concordance index, ( ) , for each pair of

C a, b
alternatives, so a fuzzy outranking relationship is defined as follows:

n n
1
c ( a, b ) =
W
å c ( a, b )
j =1
j W = å wj
j =1
where:
 ì1 if g j ( a ) + q j ( g j ( a )) ³ g j (b ) ,
ï
ï
Cj ( a, b ) = í0 if g j ( a ) + p j ( g j ( a )) £ g j (b ) ,
ï
ïîlinearly increasing with g j ( a ) in the intermediate region

The principle of discordance is called the veto threshold. The veto threshold 𝑣" j
allows the possibility of to 𝑎𝑆𝑏 to be rejected in its entirety – respect for minority
principles (Leyva, [14]) – is calculated as:

ì1 if g j ( a ) + p j ( g j ( a )) £ g j (b ) ,
ï
ï
d j ( a , b ) = í0 if g j ( a ) + v j ( g j ( a )) £ g j (b ) ,
ï
ïîlinearly increasing with g j ( a ) in the intermediate region

The principle of discordance requires that, within the minority of criteria that are
not compatible with the assertion, none of them strongly oppose the assertion –
respect for minority principles (Leyva, [14]).

Finally, the process of support for the decision is not a linear process with stages;
the procedure is iterative instead of simply sequential.

Case study.

In the process of decision support, there is a continuous flow of activities between

the different stages, but in any of them, there may be a return to a previous phase
(Figure 1). If the DM is not satisfied with the result at any stage, it can return to any
step and redo it. Considering the proposed evaluation model, the alternatives are
identified below (Table 1).

Table 1. Alternative Potentials

Alternative Municipality Alternative Municipality
A1 Sinaloa de Leyva A3 Concordia
A2 Elota A4 Escuinapa

Subsequently, the criteria (Table 2) of the incorporation guide and magical towns
indicated by SECTUR [1] were established.
 Table 2. Criteria
Criterion Concept Criterion Concept
C1 General related to C7 Natural and cultural resources
destination
C2 Tourist demand C8 Professionalization
C3 Touristic offer C9 Water
C4 Tourist management C10 Waste
C5 Infrastructure C11 Economic benefits of tourism
C6 Services C12 Social impact

After preparing the data collected from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y
Geografía (INEGI, National Institute of Statistics and Geography) [15] of the
Statistical Yearbook of the State of Sinaloa, and according to the values resulting
from the weighted sum of the individual indicators, the composite indicators are
obtained (Table 3).
Table 3. Collected data
Sinaloa de
Elota Concordia Escuinapa
Leyva
General regarding destination 17.32 3.19 6.36 9.94
Tourist demand 4.83 2.65 2.40 3.21
Touristic offer 18.79 7.40 10.62 15.29
Tourist management 13.08 0.96 5.95 7.10
Infrastructure 10.39 1.91 3.82 5.96
Services 2.90 1.59 1.44 1.93
Natural and cultural resources 11.27 4.44 6.37 9.17
Professionalization 7.85 0.57 3.57 4.26
Water 9.39 3.70 5.31 7.65
Waste 6.54 0.48 2.97 3.55
Economic benefits 4.70 1.85 2.66 3.82
Social impact 3.27 0.24 1.49 1.77

The weights, direction, preference and indifferences are shown in Table 4. The
result allows us to exploit the relation of fuzzy outranking to obtain an ordering of
alternatives of decreasing preferences.
 Table 4. Analysis values
Weights Address Preference Indifference
General regarding destination 6.3 Maximize 10 2
Tourist demand 8.8 Maximize 3 1
Touristic offer 10.0 Maximize 12 4
Tourist management 8.7 Maximize 7 0.1
Infrastructure 11.3 Maximize 6 0.5
Services 10.0 Maximize 1 0.5
Natural and cultural resources 15.0 Maximize 7 1
Professionalization 7.5 Maximize 5 0.1
Water 6.2 Maximize 7 1.2
Waste 5.0 Minimize 4 0.1
Economic benefits of tourism 6.2 Maximize 3 0.8
Social impact 5.0 Maximize 1.5 0.1

Finally, a succession is obtained in order of decreasing preference.

Sinaloa de Escuinapa,
Leyva Concordia, Elota

Figure 1. Recommendations to the decision maker

Conclusions

Currently, awarding the magic village distinction under a multicriteria approach

facilitates directing research from two approaches: on the one hand, promoting the
competitiveness of these destinations, and on the other, motivating the use of the
ELECTRE III method in conditions of subjectivity in its measurement.

In this way, the proposal to grant this distinction allowed us to generate empirical
evidence of its applicability in this type of problem by incorporating the use of
evolutionary techniques, such as the one implemented by the MOAS. In this case,
using the ELECTRE III method allows for the modeling of the preferences of the
decision maker, where said preferences can be expressed in the form of a valued
overclassification relationship.

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