This study aims to develop a mathematical algorithm to provide a tourism route that maximizes the satisfaction of disabled tourists with the trend that the number of disabled tourists and the recognition of tourism as a fundamental right spread around...
This study aims to develop a mathematical algorithm to provide a tourism route that maximizes the satisfaction of disabled tourists with the trend that the number of disabled tourists and the recognition of tourism as a fundamental right spread around the world. The algorithm is based on preferences and stay times at tourist destinations, and these are derived through accessibility to tourist destinations for different disability types. The optimal tourism route is provided within the daily available tourism time based on the assumption that as the accessibility of a tourist destination increases, the satisfaction of disabled tourists rises, and the extended stay times decrease. An optimization technique based on a mathematical model composed of an objective function to maximize the satisfaction of disabled tourists and other constraint equations is applied. The results are derived using IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimization Studio. Through numerical experiments, tourist destinations with high accessibility were prioritized, and differences in tourist destinations visited by different disability types emerged due to variations in stay time. This study is significant in that it enables balanced tourism participation for both the disabled and the non-disabled people by maximizing the tourism satisfaction of people with disabilities. Also, it is anticipated to contribute to the expansion of tourism facilities for the disabled people and to raise social awareness.