GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM SPACE
Year:2016 | Volume:5 | Issue:18|Papers Count:8

Tourism industry, considering its great number of benefits for societies from the most remote villages to big cities, has attracted the attention of politicians and planners. A major issue of tourism infrastructure is the balance between the number of tourists and the existing infrastructure. Therefore, this study, which is a descriptive-analytical, applied research, attempts to prioritize and determine the degree of development of Kermanshah province in terms of enjoying tourism infrastructure. Archival and field methods have been used in data collection. In conducting the research 18 indices relevant to tourism infrastructure have been used. In addition, in order to give substance to research indices, the experts' questionnaires (30 experts specializing in tourism) have been used. In order to prioritize towns of the province, the synthetic technique (TOPSIS and AHP) has been used and in order to measure the development of the towns, cluster analysis has been adopted. Also, GIS software has been used to show the levels of development. The research findings show that the three towns of Qasre Shirin, Paveh and Kermanshah, having the respective priority coefficients of 0.583, 0.569 and 0.512, fall into the first, second and third rank respectively. And the three towns of Babajani, Dalahoo and Harsin, having the priority coefficients of 0.198, 0.279 and 0.279, occupy the lowest ranks in terms of enjoying tourism infrastructure. In sum, in terms of development of the tourism infrastructure, about 21 percent of the towns of Kermanshah province are on very rich and rich levels, 36 percent are on fairly rich level, and 43 percent are on poor and very poor levels.

Ahar is located in the northwest of Iran and due to its diversities and special potentials, the city can be regarded as one of the best tourist destinations especially in a new form of tourism through skillful planning. Since achieving this goal leads to extensive economical and social development, in this article tourism structure of Ahar was investigated through evaluation of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats using SWOT model. The SWOT analysis results which were obtained based on the views of three experimental groups showed that the factors of strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats were 2.6422, 2.5645, 2.6957, and 2.8807 respectively. Based on the final chart ST, WT, SO and WO strategies had the largest area respectively. This shows that the final strategic state of the region tends towards the diversified strategies, means utilization of the high potentials of the region in order to overcome the threats. Thus planning should be more focused on this sector. Also the results of prioritizing series of existing strategies by the QSPM matrix showed that ST4 in ST strategies, WT4 in WT strategies, SO7 in SO strategies, and WO2 in WO strategies are high priority strategies with final attractiveness score equal to 12.74, 12.59, 13.03 and 12.64.

Tourism is one of the most important part of world economy which is really sensitive as far as air and climate are concerned. The climate has a powerful influence on Tourism and leisure sector, so that in some regions of the world tourism development is predicted based on climate changes. Wilton studies in 1998 showed that increasing each one Celsius on average summer's temperature in Canada would cause four percent increase in tourist quantities. In this study the compared tourism quantities climatic indexes included HU, CPI, PMV, PET and TCI collected from synoptic stations of Bojnurd, Damghan, Sabzevar, Sari, Shahrood and two stations inside the Golestan city, namely Moravetape and Gorgan. The effectiveness of these indexes in Golestan was studied and a thermal comfort map for identifying the best season for tourists was prepared.

Because of Imam Reza’s shrine Mashhad metropolis is the center of more than fifteen million tourists and pilgrims each year. In terms of supply, one of the major concerns for decision-makers and urban planners is providing accommodation for these tourist and pilgrims, while in terms of demand on the part of tourists, selecting suitable accommodation with different criteria such as good location, facilities, fame, cost and quality of services is of concern. Therefore, the main goal of this article was to analyze the criteria influencing the hotel selection from the perspective of tourists in Mashhad. This study was an applied quantitative research and was carried out using a descriptive-analytical method. The data collection instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire. The research population consisted of the tourists who stayed in hotels of Mashhad in August 2014. Among the resident tourists, 200 individuals were selected as the sample size based on the Cochran's formula. Generally, the research findings indicated that the criteria of hotel selection from the viewpoints of tourists were the quality of services (91.5%), geographical location, facilities and cost (76.5%) and fame and image (64.5%) respectively.

Tourism is an industry which its development requires sufficient knowledge and awareness of the issues and effective economic, social and cultural factors in every region. Thus the purpose of this study was to evaluate and prioritize the factors affecting the development of tourism within the central texture of Kermanshah to develop the tourism industry in this region. Based on the purpose of this study as well as the research method, an applied, descriptive-analytic research was conducted. Therefore, to clarify the existing literature and to provide a network model for the research, a library study was applied and field data collection method was used due to the nature of the research. Also to evaluate and prioritize the provided scales, Analytic Network Process Method (ANP) was used. The results of the study revealed that from among the indices of tourism infrastructure studied, cultural-historical scales play the most important role in the development of the area. The findings also showed that this area has the potentials to become a typical tourism region. Business and users’ progress in the understudy texture were determined as the main obstacles of the tourism development in this region.

Zoning is a science through which the optimal use of a land is determined based on its ecological, economical, and social characteristics. In many zones of Iran, the use and management of land is carried out without considering its potentials which in turn causes disinvestment and decrease of environmental potentials in metropolises suburbs. Thus the importance of land preparation in urban areas with focus on tourism cannot be ignored since the resorts in these areas are the destinations of the tourists who are going to spend their holidays there to enjoy a less populated environment. The tourists visiting these areas have various motives like sports, entertainment, and recreation. In the present study planning the land use and land preparation map have been investigated using GIS in an area of 184 hectares in Mashhad. In order to prepare the required maps in spatial planning analysis through analytic functions of GIS, all of the maps were mixed and 629 environmental units were determined as the assessors of land use and management. Comparing the various maps led to prioritizing the proposed uses for designing the park. The ecological capability map also show that some areas need protection for which the necessary arrangements should be considered.

Leisure is a new social area that in the context of modernity, contemporary social and cultural changes, and the growth of culture of consumerism, has realized its meaning and importance. Spending leisure time is one of the major functional areas in cities. The purpose of this article was an analysis of the leisure patterns in Kermanshah in order to find the right solution for leisure time development in the region. The obtained results showed that there was a direct relationship between leisure time, urban infrastructures, social- cultural attractions and the historical-natural attractions. The relationship between leisure time and other factors, i.e., historical, social-cultural attractions, urban infrastructure and natural attractions, according to the multivariate regression was 0.609, 0.089, 0.102 and 0.478. Thus, the highest correlation was between leisure time and historical attractions. Also using the Spearman method, it was seen that there was a significant and positive correlation between leisure time and urban infrastructures (r= 0.555) at the 0.99 of confidential level which meant that infrastructure was considered better than spending leisure time as far as the families satisfaction was regarded. Thus, the highest correlation using Spearman method was between leisure time and urban infrastructure. Also using one sample t -test, except for the dimensions of natural attractions in other cases proved the significant difference between the mentioned variables.

The role of tourism industry, especially rural tourism, is to develop countries’ programs and strategies. Tourism can play an important role in the diversification of rural economy and socio - cultural development. Tourism expansion in rural areas can help to sustain the population and economy and achieve sustainable development in these areas. However, the negative effects of tourism development, especially the cultural and environmental aspects, in rural areas should not be neglected and consequently efforts must be made to minimize those effects. This study was descriptive and analytical in its method. The required data were gathered using library and field study methods. The goal of this study was to investigate the concepts and effects of tourism and the necessity of rural tourism development in accordance with green tourism as well as promoting environment friendly based Islamic-Iranian model of progress and resistance economic strategy. The study focused on the potentials of Bazm, a village in Fars province. The results of the study confirmed the unique capabilities of rural areas in terms of the cultural heritage and environmental attractions, which can develop tourism industry economically and socially. Thus designing and implementing local community training strategy and human resource development can be considered as very important factors to achieve green tourism.