Harnessing Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) Approaches for Assessing District-Level Tourism Performance in Tamil Nadu: Pathways Toward Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The growth of tourism is extremely crucial for the economic development, especially in culturally vibrant and ecologically varied regions like Tamil Nadu, India. To ensure sustainable development and to inform infrastructure investments throughout the state, it is vital to accurately assess tourism performance at the district level. Following the recommendations of United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) this research adopts criteria from three key perspectives—environmental (i.e., rainfall and forest cover), social (i.e., the population density, population growth rate, and literacy rate), and economic (i.e., total vehicles, domestic and international tourist arrivals, accommodation units and total rooms). CRITIC method was first used to assign objective weights to these criteria. These weights were then used in two MCDM models CODAS (Combinative Distance-based Assessment) and GRA (Grey Relational Analysis) for ranking the districts. The results were found to be robust through ensemble models and sensitivity analysis. The top rankings of the districts - Chennai, The Nilgiris, Kanniyakumari, Coimbatore, Dindigul, Tirupathur - were extremely stable in all sensitivity scenarios. Furthermore, the cluster analysis was performed and the top performing districts were merged into one cluster. The comprehensive framework used here offers actionable insights for data-driven policy formulation and sustainable sectoral growth (SDG 8 with specifically target 8.9) for tourism.