Hospitality Management 21 (2002) 171–187 Multicriteria selection for a restaurant location in Taipei Gwo-Hshiung Tzeng a, *, Mei-Hwa Teng a , June-Jye Chen b , Serafim Opricovic c,1 a Institute of Traffic and Transportation, and Institute of Information Management, National Chiao Tung University, 114, 4F, Sec. 1, Chung Hsiao W. Road, Taipei 100, Taiwan b Department of Hotel Management, Ming-Shin Institute of Technology, 1 Hsin-Hsing Road, Hsin-Fong, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan c Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Yugoslavia Abstract One of the most important factors leading to the success of a restaurant is its location. A multicriteria decision-making method is used to rank alternative restaurant locations. The set of criteria is established for the Taipei case, and corresponding criteria should be established for each case study, although this multicriteria decision-making approach has broader applicability. In this paper, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with five aspects and 11 criteria is used to develop a location evaluation hierarchy for a restaurant. Four alternatives for the Pao-San (Takarazima Japanese Siki Kisegi cuisine) restaurant location in Taipei are evaluated. The aspects include transportation, commercial area, economic, competition and environment. The criteria are rent cost, transportation cost, convenience to mass transporta- tion system, size of parking space, pedestrian volume, number of competitors, the intensity of competition, size of the commercial area where the restaurant is located, extent of public facilities, convenience of garbage disposal, and sewage capacity. The alternatives are ranked by a multicriteria method. The result is the set of compromise solutions, including two alternative locations, to be proposed to the decision maker. The first alternative is in an expanding commercial center at the intersection of two subway lines. The second alternative is in a new city political and administrative center. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Restaurant location; Multicriteria decision-making; Compromise solution *Corresponding author. Tel.: +886-3-5712121; fax: +886-3-5753926. E-mail addresses: ghtzeng@cc.nctu.edu.tw (G.-H. Tzeng), jjchen1@ms32.hinet.net (J.-J. Chen), seropric@yahoo.com (S. Opricovic). 1 Visiting professor at National Chiao Tung University, supported by National Science Council of Taiwan (1999/2000), Taiwan. 0278-4319/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0278-4319(02)00005-1