A Likert–AHP Decision Model for Prioritising Hotel Business Takeover Strategies in Malaysia: Evidence from Kuala Lumpur
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11113/ijbes.v13.n3.1739Keywords:
Malaysia hotel business takeover, hotel acquisition, decision model, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Likert scale, cooperative investment, Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.Abstract
This paper proposes and applies an integrated Likert–Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) decision model to identify critical factors and to prioritise hotel business takeover strategies in Malaysia, using Kuala Lumpur as the benchmark investment market. A structured questionnaire was administered to 122 industry stakeholders. Respondents first rated five critical factors (location, brand, management, technology and economy/post-pandemic conditions) on a five-point Likert scale to capture perceived salience, and then completed AHP pairwise comparisons to elicit trade-off priorities. For the 5×5 factor matrix, the Consistency Ratio (CR) was computed for each respondent and only consistent judgements (CR < 0.10; n = 75) were aggregated to derive final factor weights. Likert results indicate that management (mean = 4.66) and technology (mean = 4.64) are perceived as the most salient drivers, followed by location (mean = 4.52). In contrast, CR-filtered AHP weights prioritise location (0.2657) and brand (0.2245) above management (0.1976), evidencing a perception–trade-off divergence when stakeholders are required to make explicit comparisons. To translate these priorities into actionable governance options, respondents also compared three takeover strategy alternatives using AHP, producing global priorities that favour full ownership of both asset and business (A1: 0.4028) over an asset-light business-only takeover (A2: 0.3265) and long-term leasing (A3: 0.2708). The contribution is a repeatable, CR-screened Likert–AHP model that converts practitioner judgement into transparent numerical priorities and supports more defensible board-level investment decisions.
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