The ability to attract investment, business, creativity, talents, and visitors is called urban competitiveness, which is possible by improving various urban dimensions, and tourism is one of these urban dimensions. The aim of this research is to investigate the competitiveness of urban tourism among the three cities of Meshkinshahr, Sarein, and Hir, which are cities in Ardabil Province. This research is of an applied type in terms of purpose and of a descriptive-analytical research in terms of method. The data collection method is also in the form of documents-library and field surveys. In this research, 20 experts and specialists from universities and the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization were selected using the snowball sampling method to identify effective indicators in the competitiveness of tourist destinations. By distributing the questionnaire in the first stage, 49 variables in 4 areas of natural attractions, historical and cultural attractions, tourism infrastructure, supporting urban infrastructure and facilities were selected by experts to identify and determine the position of the cities of Sarein, Hir and Meshkinshahr. In the second stage, Shannon entropy was used to determine the weight of the indicators used in the research, and the combined distance-based evaluation decision-making model known as the CODAS model was used to analyze the data. Arc GIS software was also used to prepare and analyze the maps. The results showed that among the 3 cities studied, Sarein was in the first place in the field of tourism infrastructure, and Meshkinshahr and Hir were in the next places. In the other 3 areas, Meshkinshahr was in the first place by a significant margin.

Keywords: urban tourism, competitiveness, Meshkinshahr,