Sustainable cycle-tourism for society: Integrating multi-criteria decision-making and land use approaches for route selection

•Studies on cycle-tourism lack of assessment methods of cycle-tourist routes.•An integrated method is proposed to prioritise cycle routes for multi-institutions.•The method combines AHP, ELECTRE I, VIKOR and Land use approaches.•Decision-making and participatory mapping processes is adopted.•A priority ranking by a time-proximity scale to points of interest is applied.•Results are compared with other assessment methods. Cycle tourism is a sustainable active vacation, which is quickly growing in recent years. Although it has several benefits for society and users (e.g., social connections, amusement, and physical and mental health), cycle tourism requires an adequate route network to enjoy destinations with historical and landscape peculiarities. Past literature mainly investigated motivations and preferences for cycle tourists and proposed optimisation methods in planning routes. However, applying assessment methods for prioritising cycle-tourist routes is a seldom-explored topic. This study aims to address this gap by applying an integrated method for evaluating and prioritising cycle routes, searching for a compromise between route characteristics, service provided to users, and natural and building contexts crossed. It jointly includes Multi-Criteria Decision Methods (MCDMs) and a land use approach: AHP determines the weights of criteria and parameters describing cycle routes; GIS elaborates spatial analysis of parameters; ELECTRE I and VIKOR help find a compromise solution amongst different cycle routes. The integrated method involved a panel of experts to collect data, and it is applied to the wide-study area of Franciacorta (Italy). Some comparisons with other MCDMs are made to justify the results. The findings could support multi-institutions prioritising cycle route alternatives in deciding their building.