Exploring the Nexus of Logistics and Urban Development: A Fuzzy MEREC–RATMI Barrier Prioritization for Ho Chi Minh City’s Sustainable Transformation

Abstract

The high rate of development in Ho Chi Minh City has become more reliant on tourism logistics. Still, structural limitations in governance, infrastructure, human resources, and digital capacity persist, undermining the visitor experience and sustainable development. Therefore, evaluating barriers and enablers is essential to advancing Ho Chi Minh City's development. The present study proposes a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making model based on the Method using Removal Effects of Criteria (MEREC) and Ranking Alternatives by Trace to Median Index (RATMI) to diagnose and rank the most essential tourism logistics barriers and policy intervention packages. It identifies fifteen barriers and specifies five practical intervention alternatives: integrated governance and regulatory reform, multimodal green mobility and infrastructure, smart digital platforms and integrated ticketing, data governance and analytics for tourism logistics, human capital, and inclusive service ecosystem development. The findings indicate that fragmented governance and limited data and analytics are the most influential factors, whereas high logistics costs and insufficient support facilities are less critical obstacles. The intervention of choice is data governance and analytics, followed immediately by smart digital platforms and multimodal green mobility. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the rankings remain unchanged when the top three barrier weights are perturbed by 10%, thereby validating the robustness of the proposed fuzzy MEREC-RATMI model for tourism logistics planning in Ho Chi Minh City.