Multicriteria Model for Measuring the Potential of Cultural Identity in the Tourism Development of Sincelejo, Colombia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Dear authors,

I appreciate the method you used in your paper, still the article from my oint of view needs a lot of improvements.

The introduction section should be reconsidered by adopting a better structure. you should start from general to particular. First, you should talk about cultural identity and after that about the analyzed region. You should mention the existing gap you identified in the current state of research.

The description of the region should be inserted in the section Materials and methods. 

I consider that choosing a region is not a viable option for this kind of research. You also mentioned that finding the tourists that visited that locality was very hard. For the readers it is not very interesting to read a paper referring to  a certain locality. It is too specialized. The method is more applicable if you consider to apply for a region/country.

Good luck

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We hope that the changes respond appropriately to your comments. We believe that the responses issued previously were addressed and are shown in the recent version as follows:

• Regarding the recommendation to adapt the Introduction, this was modified in the terms you recommended, we consider that it showed a great improvement based on your comment.
• Where it is suggested that the description of the region should be inserted in the Materials and Methods section, we consider mentioning this section in the same introduction “Turning our attention to Sincelejo, the capital of Colombia's Sucre department, we find a region historically renowned for its agricultural and livestock sectors, earning it the moniker "Cebuísta Capital of Colombia" due to its exceptional beef cattle. Despite its economic activities, Sincelejo, and its neighboring municipalities, including Sampués, Corozal, and Morroa, confront social inequality and limited opportunities, which adversely affect their overall quality of life”.
• Regarding the last comment, we see your concern considering your opinion, however, when carrying out the research, it was developed due to the need to generate a diagnosis to promote strategies through tourism as a viable option, taking advantage of the characteristics of the cultural identity of those localities. The methodological proposal, together with the data from the regions, turned out to be very useful, so, at his suggestion, we intend to carry it out at the level of other countries. Regarding the difficulty of finding tourists, we considered eliminating it, based on his comment.
• Finally, MDPI services were requested for the English revision of our document.

We appreciate your valuable support in revising this manuscript and look forward to fulfilling the observations made.

Thank you so much.

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)

Dear authors, congratulations on the work. The manuscript has improved substantially. Its clearer now and portrayed a more substantial contribution.

Author Response

We appreciate your contributions when reviewing our article and for the time dedicated to it. We are surely improved substantially.

Thank you so much

The authors

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Paper seems okay. It can be proceeded to publication and typesetting errors should be addressed before publishing

Author Response

We appreciate your contributions when reviewing our article and for the time dedicated to it. We are surely improved substantially.

Thank you so much

The authors

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper focused on cultural identity and tourism development, which has an interesting potential research issue. However, I think the research design and writing can not support the topic.

1.      This manuscript talks about the cultural identity

2.      How to survey? How many experts score the weight? Need more details such as sampling, questionnaire designing, time, and so on. Furthermore, you should give more details about the respondents and the items.

3.      The most important problem is that your paper tried to measure the potential of cultural identity in tourism development, but only talked about the measure of cultural identity how do these affect on tourism?

4.      Moreover, the section of introduction and discussion needs to pay more attention to the contribution of your research.

no more

Author Response

Response to comments on the manuscript Multicriteria Model for Measuring the Potential of Cultural Identity in the Tourism Development of Sincelejo, Colombia.

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you for your comments and concerns regarding the manuscript we submitted. The revised version of it is clearly an improvement over the previous version. We hope that the changes respond appropriately to your comments. In order to facilitate the review process, we respond to the notes on each point as follows:

• It was sought to give timely response to your request on the methodological process followed for the realization of this research, the percentage of people who responded to the questionnaire is raised.
• Regarding the weights of the model, in this case a public official was considered responsible for tourism strategies in the state of Sincelejo, Colombia.
• The questionnaire was subjected to a pilot test, prior to its application, a confidence level of 95% was considered.
• We sought in a substantial way to adapt the introduction and discussion of the article.
• Finally, MDPI services were requested for the English revision of our document.

We appreciate your valuable support in revising this manuscript and look forward to fulfilling the observations made.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

An interesting paper. However, I was confused when I did not see a "model" per se, like the authors were arguing they were creating. The literature review needs to be more focused and have more examples. Please see my attached notes.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Some editing needed.

Author Response

Response to comments on the manuscript 

Multicriteria Model for Measuring the Potential of Cultural Identity in the Tourism Development of Sincelejo, Colombia.   

Dear Reviewer,  

We would like to thank you for your comments and concerns regarding the manuscript we submitted. The revised version of it is clearly an improvement over the previous version. We hope that the changes respond appropriately to your comments. In order to facilitate the review process, we respond to the notes on each point as follows:  

• It was sought to give timely response to your request on the methodological process followed for the realization of this research, the percentage of people who responded to the questionnaire is raised.
• Regarding the weights of the model, in this case a public official was considered responsible for tourism strategies in the state of Sincelejo, Colombia.
• The questionnaire was subjected to a pilot test, prior to its application, a confidence level of 95% was considered.
• We sought in a substantial way to adapt the introduction and discussion of the article. Regarding the approach of the model, it was carried out according to the criteria established for it, SAW was used as a mathematical process.
• The model was schematized, in the steps that were adapted for this research.
• Finally,  MDPI services were requested for the English revision of our document.   

We appreciate your valuable support in revising this manuscript and look forward to fulfilling the observations made. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, 

First of all you need to revise the text. From the beginning the first paragraph is too long, there are repeating words. Compared to the rest of the text the introduction and literature review is too long, even if the article is not enough referenced.

The material section must present the city were the study has been conducted. 

The discussion section must be enriched

The conclusion section needs improvement :which are the limitations? Future directions? Managerial implications? 

Author Response

Response to comments on the manuscript

Multicriteria Model for Measuring the Potential of Cultural Identity in the Tourism Development of Sincelejo, Colombia.

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you for your comments and concerns regarding the manuscript we submitted. The revised version of it is clearly an improvement over the previous version. We hope that the changes respond appropriately to your comments. In order to facilitate the review process, we respond to the notes on each point as follows:

• It was sought to give timely response to your request on the methodological process followed for the realization of this research, the percentage of people who responded to the questionnaire is raised.

• Regarding the weights of the model, in this case a public official was considered responsible for tourism strategies in the state of Sincelejo, Colombia.

• The questionnaire was subjected to a pilot test, prior to its application, a confidence level of 95% was considered.

• We sought in a substantial way to adapt the introduction and discussion of the article.

• Regarding the approach of the model, it was carried out according to the criteria established for it, SAW was used as a mathematical process.

• The model was schematized, in the steps that were adapted for this research.

• Future studies to be developed were proposed.

• Improved conclusions.

• Finally, MDPI services were requested for the English revision of our document.

We appreciate your valuable support in revising this manuscript and look forward to fulfilling the observations made.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors, the paper is nice and has an interesting object of study. However, I have some concerns on your work.

1. The paper needs proofreading. Specifically, it is advisable that the authors restructure sentences as they tend to be long. 

2. References in the text are not cited properly.

3. I dont think the research question is appropriate: How to evaluate the potential of the cultural identity of Sincelejo for its tourism development?The paper mostly measure the perception of individuals about cultural attributes of the region. It does not reflect how potential are those perceptions in attracting tourists.

4. The article refers to a study in Yogyakarta (Indonesia) to define the dimensions to be used in this study. However, the background of Yogyakarta is extremely different to Sincelejo. Yogyakarta has great (ancestral) cultural roots (Hindu, Buddhist, Javanese, and even moder colonial european roots), and rich architectural sites, and not an agricultural (cattle) region. Yogyakarta is a kingdom with political, economic, and religious structures that seem to be beyond the background of Sincelejo. I believe the authors need to better argue why to use Issundari, Sumadinata & Heryadi (2021) as a reference for the dimensions

5. Seems that the data captures the perception of inhabitants of the municipalities (noted in section 3.1), rather than the level of perception that tourists have of the destination (as noted in section 2.1). please clarify the profile of respondents. 

 

6. Comparing four municipalities its interesting. However, that says little on whether those municipalities can be an alternative to mass tourism as noted by the authors in the introduction. 

7. The authors need to elaborate more on the results. The implications, relation to the literature, and conclusion are too shallow. As it is now, the papers is not making a great contribution to the literature. The paper will benefit by comparing results with previos studies (criterias, weighting) and what are the implications for tourims potential.

8. The conclusion is shallow. It will be great if the authors elaborate on how policymakers "can better plan investments and tourism promotion efforts in each municipality to improve perception and increase the number of visitors" with this results rather than just mention that hypotetical posibility in the conclusion. The contribution of your paper may derive from this process (connecting your results with the planing and promotion efforts" if you consider that to be the main strenght of your paper.

9. Please try to expand your references on cultural aspects on tourism as a driver of tourist inflows. Although those are more empirical (long secondary datasets) they provide theoretical background on cultural affinity or aversion:

Ahn, M.J. and McKercher, B. (2015), “The effect of cultural distance on tourism: a study of international visitors to Hong Kong”, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 94-113, doi: 10.1080/ 10941665.2013.866586.

Beerli, A., Meneses, G.D. and Gil, S.M. (2007), “Self-congruity and destination choice”, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 571-587.

Heriqbaldi, U., Esquivias, M.A. and Agusti, K.S. (2023), "The role of cultural distance in boosting international tourism arrivals in ASEAN: a gravity model", Consumer Behavior in Tourism and Hospitality, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 97-109. https://doi.org/10.1108/CBTH-12-2021-0288

Huang, C.-H., Tsaur, J.-R. and Yang, C.-H. (2012), “Does world heritage list really induce more tourists? Evidence from Macau”, Tourism Management, Vol. 33 No. 6, pp. 1450-1457, doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2012.01.014.

Kogut, B. and Singh, H. (1988), “The effect of national culture on the choice of entry mode”, Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 411-432, doi: 10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8490394.

I believe the paper needs improvement (re-structure) of sentences and citations

Author Response

Response to comments on the manuscript

Multicriteria Model for Measuring the Potential of Cultural Identity in the Tourism Development of Sincelejo, Colombia.

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you for your comments and concerns regarding the manuscript we submitted. The revised version of it is clearly an improvement over the previous version. We hope that the changes respond appropriately to your comments. In order to facilitate the review process, we respond to the notes on each point as follows:

• Itwas sought to give timely response to your request on the methodological process followed for the realization of this research, the percentage of people who responded to the questionnaire is raised.
• Regarding the weights of the model, in this case a public official was considered responsible for tourism strategies in the state of Sincelejo, Colombia.

• The questionnaire was subjected to a pilot test, prior to its application, a confidence level of 95% was considered.

• We sought in a substantial way to adapt the introduction and discussion of the article.

• Regarding the approach of the model, it was carried out according to the criteria established for it, SAW was used as a mathematical process.

• The model was schematized, in the steps that were adapted for this research.

• Future studies to be developed were proposed.

• Improved conclusions.

• Finally, MDPI services were requested for the English revision of our document.

We appreciate your valuable support in revising this manuscript and look forward to fulfilling the observations made.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf