APPLICATION OF MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION-MAKING METHODS IN DESTINATION BENCHMARKING

The systematic promotion of tourism can be understood as a specific tool of regional policy. Tourism must be managed with respect to the long-term concept of sustainability to enable the regions to fully utilize their potential. Therefore, the regions make use of strategic planning to fulfil this aim. The paper focuses on strategic planning as a key factor of competitiveness and an approach to increasing its quality through benchmarking method. Selection of appropriate benchmarking partners is the key phase of destination's benchmarking process. The paper discusses a possibility of application of the TOPSIS method which ranks among the multi-criteria decision-making methods. It tests this method on selected sample of development strategies in order to identify the most suitable destinations for next phases of benchmarking survey.