GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM SPACE
Year:2015 | Volume:4 | Issue:16|Papers Count:8

Currently, tourism industry is an important source of income, employment opportunities, and infrastructure improvement to achieve a sustainable development. The city of Mahneshan like other places in Iran, despite having plenty of potentials and capabilities in the field of ecotourism and geo tourism and varied unique natural attractions, is still not visited by a lot of tourists and is facing with various problems. This study identifies the capabilities of ecotourism and geo tourism in Mahneshan using a strategic approach. The study is an applied research in terms of its goals and a descriptive-analytical one in terms of its methodology and deals with the issues under study through the documented and field finding. Data collection was carried out through interviews and questionnaires and based on the data; the attractions, potentials and the general status of ecotourism and geo tourism were studied. The SWOT analysis method was used to analyze the data and to define the development strategies for the ecotourism and geo tourism and finally a few guidelines and strategies were proposed with respect to the ecotourism and geo tourism in the area. The results showed that the studied area with 10 strong points and coefficient of 3.51 and 8 opportunities and coefficient of 3.39 against 8 weak points and final coefficient of 1.65 and 8 threats and final coefficient of 1.67 has many capabilities for the development of ecotourism and geo tourism. The study proved that the weaknesses and threats caused these potentials not to be achieved. Thus the final strategy for the development of ecotourism and geo tourism in Mahneshan will be an aggressive strategy based on reinforcing the strengths and exploiting some opportunities in order to overcome the weaknesses and threats existing against the development of the region.

Fascinating and special desert regions in Iran with natural face are of great importance. Despite the limitations of life, beautiful and magnificent landscapes of these regions, they can be considered as the modern tourist attractions. Ecotourism desert with its sustainable development as the engine of the economy and desert wilderness areas diversifies the local economy.The economic conditions of the inhabitants of the deserts causes the injection of capital into other sectors including the agriculture and farming which in their own turn will affect the cultural, environmental and social aspects as well. In this study, the importance and necessity of nature desert wilderness and ecotourism in the national economy and regional role as well as its social consequences, strategies ecotourism attractions of the deserts of Iran, their capabilities and limitations and the social role of those factors were explored. Besides, the feasibility of tourist attractions of such areas with the approach of sustainable development offered by ecotourism was studied.

Tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world. In both developed and developing countries, tourism is frequently supposed to be a viable means of raising the economic activity of regions. Additionally, the development of a tourism industry has been noted to promote the destination's image, enabling the region to achieve other objectives, such as business recruitment and retention. The purpose of this study was to study the effect of rural tourism on social development in rural areas. This study was descriptive - analytical in terms of research methodology, practical in terms of nature and is a library and field kind of research in terms of the type of data collection. The statistical population consisted of 5643 villagers in Meshkinshar, of which 331 were selected for this research using stratified sampling. The researcher made a questionnaire as a measuring tool in the research. The face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by a panel of experts. A pilot study with a population similar to the statistical population with a total of 30 questionnaires was performed and the obtained data yielded a Cronbach's alpha with the reliability of 0.91 in the SPSS software. The results of T-Test shows that there was a significant difference between respondents of Onar village and Kojang in reinforcement of educational infrastructures, empowerment, social cohesion, satisfaction, access to social services, employment conditions, membership of civic complexes, education, life quality and job security. Also, the results showed that there was no significant difference in social responsibility, social participation, reducing of conflicts, social cooperation, and local dependency between respondents. Finally, according to the study results, a number of recommendations in solving the farmers’ problems were also presented.

The purpose of this research was to study and analyze the factors affecting the creation and development of tourism in Kashan. The study is functional and has been carried out using analytical methods. The study population consisted of residents in Kashan, including 302,637 people. The sample size was calculated of 200 based on the sampling formula. Then, by using a survey and questionnaire, the required information was gathered from the respondents. Then the data were run into SPSS software and the reliability of the tests was determined using Cronbach's alpha test. Data analysis was performed using Pearson test and regression. The results of the Pearson correlation analysis showed that there was a significant relationship between the four studied variables which were social participation, development of local infrastructure, local community satisfaction, social patterns and cultural heritage protection and tourism development with the variable of creations. Also the results of the regression analysis suggested that the variable of local development of infrastructure had the greatest impact out of the four studied aspects with the coefficient of 0.348 on the ‘creation’ variable and development of tourism in Kashan.

The South Khorasan Province has the potential of tourism and it has provided a suitable opportunity for the sustainable development of tourism. Identification of its potentials and limitations of tourism as well as principal planning in this field can play an effective role in the development and diversity of national and regional economy. Hence, the purpose of this article was the strategic planning of sustainable tourism development in the this Province. In order to help the tourism develop and the province have a sustainable and competitive international tourist destination, effective strategic factors were detected and the importance and priority of factors and groups and their relationships were also studied using the mixed model of SWOT & ANP. Then the most important opportunities and threats, strong and weak points of the province tourism were presented after ranking strategic factors based on the sustainable development of the tourism industry in the province. Research findings and results from SWOT factors in the form of analytic network process (ANP) indicated that the most important strategic factors in South Khorasan province are: diverse natural attractions, in field of Geo-tourism and Eco-tourism (0.7940) as the strong point, low capacity management (0.3531) as the weak point, in the group of opportunities, introduction province as the pilot of sustainable development with the emphasis on tourism on behalf of the United Nations (0.4741), and in the group of threats, disinclination of the private sector and investors to invest in the field of tourism (0.3411). Finally, by the purpose of strategic planning the province from sustainable tourism viewpoint and by the integration of strategic factors in the scope of the study, the aggressive and growth and development strategy have significant importance.

Analyzing the impact of tourism on rural areas was the major purpose of the present study. Accordingly, this study is a survey study because of its application type, and method of data collection, and description as well as the comparison it has made. The population included 908 families from which a stratified random sampling of 206 individuals was extracted using Cochran’s formula (p&q= .5, confidence level %95, d= .05).The research instrument was a questionnaire the validity of whih was confirmed by a group of experts. To determine the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale was used. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS software. The results of using factorial analysis, five factors were identified in the explanation of tourism on rural areas. These factors, in order of importance were: economic (20.35 percent), physical (16.93%), social and cultural (13.35%), ecological (13.29%) and public health (10.97%). The five mentioned factors covered 74.92% of the total variance explained by the effects of tourists in rural areas under the study.

Iran is a home of Ramsar International Convention of Wetland and it is expected to care about all wetlands across the country including Azali wetland. The Anzali set of wetland is considered as the most important southern wetland in Caspian district. This wetland is important because of its vast life variation of plants and animals and is also important for feeding, resting, breading, immigration as well as winter passing area for birds. Considering the crucial roles that Anazli wetland plays locally and nationally, the current study aims to investigate and evaluate effective marketing factors for attracting tourists to this well-known wetland. Based on this, the method of study is a kind of descriptive-analytical. The required data was gathered by field study and observation and completing sample questionnaires from 347 tourists of Anzali wetland as the sample group. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics as well as inferential statistics including spearman’s correlation test were used. The results from the study indicated that there was a significant relationship between the city brand (originality, personality, and positioning), satisfaction, the performance of authorities and effective advertisement with attracting tourists. The result of the study suggests taking advantages of opportunities and appropriate potentials which exist in the local area. By applying local visitors as potential developers, local authorities can introduce Azali wetland attractions to newcomers and new tourists who will in turn help eco-tourism develop more in future.

The main objective of the present study was to identify the indexes of rural tourism development with emphasis on the cultural tourism in the village of Heidarabad in Ilam. The Present research was a quantitative study as far as the methodology is concerned and a survey one if its data collection is regarded. The statistical population of this study consisted of three groups of expert, rural households and tourists. In order to choose the sample, the researcher used census method for the first group; convenience sampling method for tourists. Totally 250 people were chosen for the study. The main instrument of gathering data was questionnaire the validity of which was confirmed by a group of experts. The Cronbach alpha Coefficient used to determine questionnaire reliability was estimated 0.96. The results of factor analysis showed that regarding cultural dimension, the promotional mechanisms with the percentage of 21.93 was the most important mechanism of rural tourism development.