Tourism Management Studies
Year:2010 | Volume:- | Issue:13|Papers Count:10

The Tourism industry is one of the most important resources of income for countries. Therefore, the government and the tourism agencies in Iran need to find new and reliable ways to meet the long-run goals to successfully capture whatever market share is available. Tourism planning and management, starts with the identification of factors affecting tourism development. This study attempts to assess foreign tourists satisfaction with the tourism facilities and services of Shiraz’ tourist spots, while exploring their characteristics. The factors affecting foreign tourists satisfaction were identified according to the prevailing literature and the experts’ viewpoints. Then, using factor analysis, the main factors were extracted, and by applying AHP technique, the importance coefficient of each factor was calculated.The results revealed that “The attitude of Iranian natives towards tourists”, “Iranian life style, customs, and culture”, “The safety and security” and “Difficulties with Communication”, are the main factors which their betterment can lead to a higher level of foreign tourists’ satisfaction in Shiraz.

Although the concept of classification has long been used in urban and regional planning and development, and has been widely published about, it is still a new concept in tourism literature both at national and international levels. In order to delineate this concept in tourism literature, its bases, principles, and significance need to be studied on, and a coherent conceptual framework needs to be set. Therefore, this paper tries to discuss the position of classifying destinations in tourism planning at first, and then it explains some other similar concepts in order to differentiate them and determines each of their applications. Following that, the principles of classifying tourism destinations have been identified in order to systematize this concept. Finally, its significance in spatial planning of tourism has been discussed.

The present research aims to study the various dimensions of security in Iran’s sport tourism. The statistical population of this research include all of the international sport tourists such as athletes, coaches, trainers, doctors, journalists, and associated delegations, who participated in the Fajr International Games (2010). The total number of the sample population is 420. The preliminary data were collected using a questionnaire devised by the researcher which its validity was approved by the experts. To determine the reliability, the questionnaires were distributed among 25 foreign sport tourists, resulting in Cronbach's alpha (a=0.83). This questionnaire investigated various dimensions such as the sport tourists satisfaction with the existing security in Iran, the security-disturbing factors from the view point of sport tourists before and after traveling to Iran, the role of the tourist police in the maintenance and improvement of tourism in Iran, the role of the media in depicting security in this country, and the measures these tourists suggest to be taken to improve security in Iran’s sport tourism. For data analysis, in the descriptive statistics section, standard deviation, cumulative frequency, cumulative frequency percentage, mean and mode were identified and for the evaluation of the data SPSS16 was employed.The results show that the major causes of worry for sport tourists before coming to Iran were: social aggressiveness, personal territory violation, and robbery. However, 34% of the tourists declared they were not worried at all about the security in Iran before their departure. The most prominent matters the sport tourists were anxious about, during their visit to Iran, were: lack of personal security, social aggressiveness, and psychological insecurity. However, regarding some security-disturbing matters like hitting, murder, rape, and terrorism, no signs of concern among the tourists were felt.  Additionally, 53% of the sports tourist didn’t witness any security violating circumstances during their visit to Iran. Anyhow, the feeling of insecurity originating from the media, family and friends, decreased significantly after the tourists’ traveling to Iran.

Quality of service is one of the most important issues for competing service companies, and consequently using a method for service quality mesurment is of great significance. Although there is no consensus on the most appropriate method for this measurement, in this study, according to the literature review findings, using the SERVQUAL model for comparing hotel guest’s expectations and perceptions was preferred. Therefore, our focus in this article is on the different dimensions of service quality in SERVQUAL model, and SPSS 16 was employed to analyze these dimensions of our case study. The findings of the research are classified into two parts: the first part contains some information about demographical attributions of the respondents. The second part, are the hypothesis tests demonstrating that the perceived quality of service in Mashhad’s Homa II hotel is higher than expectations of Iranian guests.

Due to the importance of Small and Medium sized Enterprises, this article is mainly focused on the evaluation and prioritization of the governmental support for these businesses.The method of this research is descridptive based on a 5 point Likert scale questionnaire. Our sample population consists of the 158 CEOs of some active travel agencies (type B) of Tehran participating in this survey. For the data analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics (Binomial and chi-square tests) were utilized, and then Freidman test was performed to prioritize–from the view point of our subjectsthe governmental support for the SMEs.The results indicate that interviewees regard governmental support as being low. Moreover, the following is the interviewees’ prioritization of the governmental support for SMEs: 1) Financial and credit support, 2) Infrastructural support, 3) Marketing and research support, 4) Training and technical support, 5) Promotion and advisory.

Tourism destination brand equity is defined as the brand assets (or liabilities) linked to a destination`s name and symbol that add to (or subtract from) the services and experiences provided. Each year, the brand equities of different international brands are measured by reputable international institutions. In many cases, the equity value is higher than physical assets and this indicates the importance of the brand issue. Thus recognizing the critical factors that affect brand equity is essential.Due to the cultural and social differences and characteristics of Iran’ tourism destinations, this study, through Konecnik (2007) framework, was conducted to detect the factors that domestic tourists recognize as influencing the brand equity of Yazd. The study population consists of potential tourists which have been available in the entrances of Tehran in the period 15 April to 15 May 2010. For analysis of the data the confirmatory factor analysis was used. This research aims to identify the critical factors which tourists think can affect the brand equity and investigates the importance of each factor in their perspectives.The results of the this study imply that in addition to the brand image, which has been more than 30 years the most important factor for the destination brand evaluation, there are other aspects such as brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand awareness of tourism destinations, that  can directly impact on brand equity of Yazd tourism destination. Among those attributes, brand loyalty has the strongest direct effect on the brand equity, while awareness has the least effect.

Tourism Destination Image (TDI) has an essential role and impact on the tourist' decision making process, destination selection and the tourists behavior. The present article is an attempt to give a holistic view on the image, it’s process, and the important factors affecting the image formation (either before or after visiting a destination).The results indicate that the image formation is affected by the tourist’s perception and personality, as well as the destination profile. It is hoped that this article will be useful as a guide for destination marketing and planning.