Reviving the Tourism Industry in Post-COVID Singapore: An MCDM and Optimization Approach

Wu Qiutong

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic's disruptive impact on the tourism sector, the government has launched a series of initiatives aiming to rejuvenate the industry. In particular, Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has released a new 4-year funding program comprising the Tourism Product Development Scheme, Tourism Event Development Scheme and Tourism Capability Development Scheme to enhance the tourist experience and revitalise the tourism sector in the post-COVID landscape with an ultimate goal to develop tourism resilience and sustainability. Given an uncertain economic climate and limited financial resources, it is imperative to design an assessment framework capable of evaluating the relative returns of the funding programs that help inform strategic budget allocation. This framework must satisfy three critical requirements: it must assess from the three sustainable growth dimensions, Economics, Social-Cultural and Environmental, integrate both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and employ optimization models for effective budget allocation. In response, this paper proposed a composite approach combines Analytic Hierarch Process (AHP), Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Portfolio Optimization models. The AHP identifies the weight of criteria reflecting the benefits of the funding schemes, while ANP accounts for the interrelated effects and impacts across time horizons. Finally, a multi-period linear portfolio optimization model optimizes the budget allocation based on the weights attained from earlier and allocates the final funding for each scheme across multiple segments. The findings indicate that the Tourism Product Development Scheme is the most significant scheme which should be allocated the highest amount of funding. However, the priority may shift depending on the government’s objective, for example, a strong emphasis on sustainability would lead to more resources being allocated to the Tourism Capability Development Scheme.