Creating a new cultural tourism product related to local post-industrial heritage as a multiple criteria decision aiding problem

Creating local cultural tourism products (CTPs) requires the involvement of many entities, e.g., local government units, culture and tourism institutions, non-government organisations, etc., as well as organisational, technical, financial, and human resources. When deciding on a future product venture, it is important to establish visions, goals, or the product’s desired functions common to all these actors. Then, the alternative instances of such CTP need to be designed and examined from the viewpoint of these goals, which may be mutually exclusive due to the various preferences of the actors. Furthermore, despite their importance, these criteria may conflict with, e.g., the tourism policy of local authorities. The issues mentioned above make the decisions regarding creating CTPs very complex and have behavioural, group multiple criteria character. This paper aims to identify the structural elements of creating the best possible CTP promoting local post-industrial heritage in the Czeladź Commune. The specific assumptions, conditions, and criteria are defined to formulate the problem for further consideration using multiple criteria group decision-making (GDM) approaches. Keywords: multiple criteria decision making, group decision-making, multiple criteria problems in cultural tourism, decisions on new cultural tourism products.