Absolute measurement with analytic hierarchy process: a case study for Italian racecourse

One often wonders why more people in organisations do not rush today to use a formal decision-making approach to make their complex decisions. This paper places special emphasis on the measurement of intangible criteria and on their incorporation into the allocation process through a proper decision making approach. In this work, a well-known decision-making method, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to identify a quality model to evaluate Italian racecourses performances based upon the criteria: Quality organisation of racing, infrastructure and equipment, attractiveness and finally management skill. The motivation on which the study is based is the need to identify a model to evaluate Italian racecourses and to distribute economic resources. The main conclusion is that the AHP model adopted can manage all the information of the real-world problem and can help to structure the decision process in order to achieve the optimum solution.