A Multi-Agent Approach towards Designing a City Port Business Model

The present paper concerns the design of a city port business model incorporating Public Private Partnership schemes. Extensive literature review was acquired, in order to fully comprehend the organizational schemes and state of practice of Public Private Partnerships at ports. A survey was conducted at the port of Volos, based on questionnaire and interviews, to define the functions and services of the port, which could benefit from the private involvement and improve its role as a transport interchange for all involved stakeholders. The collected data were analyzed, using a modified version of Analytic Hierarchy Process, which revealed the relevant importance of port functions and services. Three different management models were considered to tackle the most important issues that came up during the analysis and they were evaluated based on the literature; the current one, a landlord management model and a partial privatization management model. The results of this process indicated, that the landlord management model would be the most effective for the particular case of the port of Volos. The landlord model seemed to perform better in improving both the operation of the organization and the level of passenger satisfaction, through its increased management flexibility, due to the segmentation of services and reduction of bureaucracy, as well as the additional investment capital that it can attract. Based on the proposed management model, actions and measures improving on the port’s business model are recommended.