Genetic Algorithms Search for Tourism Marketing Optimisation Problems

Optimization methods are widely used in marketing, and in certain tourism applications, but appear to have been ignored in the tourism marketing literature. The advantages of a relatively new generation of general optimization methods, meta-heuristics, over traditional optimization methods are discussed. The application of genetic algorithms within a tourism marketing context is then demonstrated, with specific reference to the problem of tourism site location. The results suggest that genetic algorithms are likely to outperform traditional optimization methods when the number of sites (existing and proposed) is large