Utilizing TOPSIS-Sort for sorting tourist sites for perceived COVID-19 exposure

During pandemics and outbreaks, the prevalence of fear among tourists reduces travel interests. To gradually reopen the tourism industry, subscribing to domestic tourism is a crucial mitigation strategy. Although an important agenda, evaluating the perceived degree of exposure of tourists to COVID-19 in tourist sites functioning under the domestic tourism initiatives has not been explored in the emerging literature. Thus, this work addresses this problem domain by proposing the use of TOPSIS-Sort – a recently introduced multiple criteria sorting method. To demonstrate such an application, 20 tourist sites in a central Philippine province are evaluated under six attributes that define exposure to COVID-19. With 208 survey participants, results show that 12 sites are assigned to the ‘moderate exposure’ class, and eight under the ‘high exposure’ class, with no tourist site assigned to the ‘low exposure’ class. The proposed approach offers primary stakeholders (i.e. government, tourist operators, and tourists) a decision support tool in view of tourism recovery.