Strategic Adaptation in Travel Agencies: Integrating MARA with SWOT for Uncertainty Navigation

Abstract

In the realm of managerial decision-making, particularly within the last few decades, the process has emerged as a formidable challenge. This paper focuses on strategic decision-making, crucial in determining organizational success or failure amidst prevailing uncertainties. To address this, the Matrix Approach to Robustness Analysis (MARA), a recent innovation, is integrated with the established Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) matrix. This integration aims to deliver robust outcomes in strategic planning for travel agencies. The methodology involves a comprehensive analysis of internal and external factors pertinent to a travel agency, applying the analytical rigor of the SWOT matrix. Subsequent to this analysis, a series of strategies are formulated. Central to this study is the identification of key environmental indicators, as perceived by stakeholders, which influence strategic outcomes. Through these indicators, various future scenarios are constructed, culminating in nineteen plausible scenarios. Each strategy, totalling twelve, is then evaluated against these scenarios to ascertain the conditions under which they are most effective, resulting in a performance matrix. The final phase involves calculating the robustness analysis scores for each strategy under two different assessment conditions: rigorous and lenient. These scores provide a basis for strategy prioritization in both scenarios. The analysis reveals that the strategy of expanding new pilgrimage tours holds the greatest promise, while the employment of relatives within the agency is deemed least effective. This study contributes to the field by offering a structured methodology for travel agencies to navigate uncertain environments, using a combination of MARA and SWOT. The findings underscore the importance of scenario-based strategic planning and robustness analysis in enhancing decision-making processes.

Analyzing Primary Sector Selection for Economic Activity in Romania: An Interval-Valued Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Approach

“…Enhanced representation of uncertainty: IVF sets provide a robust framework and flexible representation of uncertainty compared to other fuzzy variants [34]. While triangular or trapezoidal fuzzy sets represent uncertainty with single membership values, interval-valued fuzzy sets capture uncertainty through intervals of membership values.…”