Examination of the Sustainable Rural Tourism Potential of the Brcko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina Using a Fuzzy Approach Based on Group Decision Making

Tourism is an economic activity with great contribution for the development of many countries. To develop rural areas, tourism is especially important and need to be improved in these areas. The Government of Brcko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina has decided to have tourism improvement as one of main objectives in their development strategy focusing on better conditions for development of tourism. Investments in tourism should be applied to the entire area of the Brcko District. Since Brcko District mainly consists of rural areas, it is necessary to invest in rural tourism. The first step of this study was to determine the tourist potential of rural areas. The determination of rural tourist potential in Brcko District was carried out with the assistance of the Brcko District Government. For this purpose, the method of expert decision-making was used, and three experts were selected who evaluated six rural settlements. To obtain results based on expert evaluation, two multi-criteria methods were used: the Full Consistency Method (FUCOM) for determining the importance of criteria and the fuzzy Measurement Alternatives and Ranking according to the COmpromise Solution (MARCOS) method to rank rural settlements in terms of their tourism potential. The results showed that the settlement of Bijela has the best rural tourist potential, while the settlement of Grbavica has the least potential. The results obtained by applying this model showed how rural tourism in Brcko District can be improved. The research model for testing the tourism potential has shown good results and can be applied in other branches of tourism with some adaptation to certain branches of tourism.

Automated summary

Tourism plays a significant role in the economic development of countries, especially in rural areas. By utilizing expert decision-making and multi-criteria methods, the study identified the rural tourism potential in the Brcko District and suggested ways to enhance rural tourism.