An integrated decision support framework for exploring the barriers and potential application scenarios in metaverse hospitality

The global hospitality industry is undergoing a profound transformation, primarily driven by the internet era within the context of Industry 4.0 and the continuous evolution of the metaverse. The metaverse offers limitless possibilities for creating immersive and personalized accommodation experiences by closely integrating the virtual with the real world. It also provides a new perspective and mindset for guiding the hospitality industry to rethink and redesign service models and business processes. Although the metaverse application in the hospitality industry has already made significant progress, this process still faces numerous barriers, and the specific application scenarios of the metaverse hospitality industry (MHI) remain unclear. This study aims to develop an integrated decision support framework for exploring the barriers and potential application scenarios in metaverse hospitality. First, the interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs) is introduced to quantify the complex and uncertain information in the decision-making procedure. Second, the IT2F-BWM with the IT2F weighted averaging (IT2FWA) operator is proposed to calculate the barriers’ weights considering the group opinions. Third, the IT2FWA operator and IT2F-ExpTODIM method are incorporated to prioritize the potential application scenarios in MHI. Finally, a case study on the prioritization of barriers and application scenarios in MHI is utilized to test the effectiveness and practicality of the presented framework. Results show that the technology barrier (0.5217) and the interaction technology (0.2483) have the highest levels among the main and sub-main barrier hierarchies, respectively. The findings of this article may enrich the theories of uncertain decision-making methods and provide instructive suggestions for the operation and management of metaverse hospitality practice.