Building a cruise industry resilience hierarchical structure for sustainable cruise port cities

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, the cruise industry hit its lowest point, which made operators either cancel or change cruise itineraries, causing significant devastation to cruise ports and port cities. Consequently, the concept of resilience, which focuses on an industry’s ability to recover after disruption, has grown in popularity and must be studied by both scholars and practitioners. This study aims to construct a valid hierarchical resilience model based on the causal interrelationship between attributes to guide practitioners in reaching resilient outcomes. The results are expected to be useful for researchers and industry stakeholders in determining actions to utilize the remaining equipment and budget to build future strategies for a quicker recovery. This study uses the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (FDEMATEL) and the analytic network process (ANP) to analyze questionnaires and accomplish the objectives of the study. The findings show that technological resilience is the most important dimension and that it has strong influences on all other dimensions. In addition, innovation adaptability, port authorities, the urban built environment and resource allocation procedures are the linkage criteria identified as the strongest causes in achieving resilience.