Tourism planning
Nima Khademi; Abbas Abbasi; Kazem Askarifar
Abstract
Local event tourism is one of the types of tourism that can play an essential role in the sustainable economic and social development of communities. However, this issue has received less attention. Meymand Fars Flower and Rose Festival is one of these events held every year in the spring season. This ...
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Local event tourism is one of the types of tourism that can play an essential role in the sustainable economic and social development of communities. However, this issue has received less attention. Meymand Fars Flower and Rose Festival is one of these events held every year in the spring season. This study aims to identify the factors that attract tourists to this event. For this purpose, the factors attracting tourists to the events were extracted by qualitative content analysis and then the tourists' opinions. Finally, a conceptual framework ofinfluencing factors on customers' tendencies, including 50 indicators in 15 components, was presented. Also, the quantitative analysis of Q data shows that accessibility, hospitality, and spending time with friends were essential for the first group of tourists, social interactions and event quality were necessary for the second group, patriotic and learning motives were important for the third group, and experience and enjoyment of the event were necessary for the fourth group. At the same time, natural attractions and enjoyment of the festival environment have been essential for all tourists, and these results can be a basis for formulating marketing strategies for local tourism events.IntroductionDuring the last two decades, the tourism industry has increasingly strengthened the local economy due to its high diversity and convenient access. In addition, the development of the tourism industry causes benefits such as increasing the employment and income of residents, improving transportation, and, most importantly, protecting the cultural heritage of local communities. One of the types of tourism is event tourism, which has grown significantly in recent years. Event tourism is a form of travel with special interests in which people visit a special event to attend or along with their trip. One of the important products in tourism development has been an event in the form of cultural festivals. In this regard, local festivals as a branch of cultural events are considered one of travelers’ actions in rural areas. On the other hand, due to its various natural, historical, and cultural attractions, Iran is considered one of the most capable countries in the world for organizing such events. For this reason, practical steps can be taken toward the successful development of this type of tourism by more closely examining the events and festivals held in the country. One of these local festivals is the Meymand Fars Flower and Rose Festival, held every year at the beginning of the rose-picking season for one month in the Meymand Fars region. In this regard, it will be beneficial to identify the effective factors in attracting tourists to this annual local event, to get a more detailed understanding of the affairs and a deeper understanding of the social, cultural, and economic realities of the region and to plan for the sustainable development of this region. However, this issue has received less attention despite its clarity and necessity. On this subject, the current research seeks to identify the indicators and components influencing the tendency of tourists to visit rural events by using the qualitative content analysis method and providing a conceptual framework of these factors. Then, by analyzing the data of Meymand Flower and Rose Festival tourists based on the conceptual model, the types of tourists of this local event were identified.Materials and MethodsThis research aims to identify the factors that attract event tourists to local festivals using the Q method in Meymand Flower and Rose Festival, Fars. In terms of purpose, this research is practical, and according to the approach and type of data, it can be categorized as mixed research. The current research was carried out in 2023 in Fars province regarding time and place. In this research, first, the qualitative content analysis method with a directional approach has been used to identify and determine the existing indicators. Then, to know the mentality of participants in the Meymand Fars Flower and Rose Festival and collect data (using the Q method), all the customers who participated in this festival in 2023 were studied.Discussion and ResultsIn the first step, based on the content analysis of the screened studies, the researchers reviewed the final studies several times to determine titles or themes. At this stage, the researchers identified the factors affecting tourists' tendency towards events. Since some words had the same meaning, the necessary overlaps were made, and some indicators were removed. In the next step, the content validity ratio of Lawshe was used to check the validity of indicators in rural tourism. After this step, the number of 50 indicators was finalized and categorized into 15 concepts. Then, in the quantitative part, the data obtained from the Q factor analysis methodology was used to identify and extract the mentality of tourists. For this purpose, the tourists' opinions about the factors affecting their attendance at the Meymand Flower and Rose Festival 2023 were collected. With exploratory factor analysis, the participants were selected based on the shared values and the role of the data in explaining the total explanatory variance, and finally, the Varimax rotation divided the rest into four groups after removing 30 of them.ConclusionsIn this research, an attempt was made to use a mixed approach; firstly, with the help of qualitative content analysis, the indicators and components of local festivals were identified, and then the mentality of the tourists of Meymand Fars Flower and Rose Festival was extracted as a study. Finally, a conceptual framework of influencingfactors on customers' tendencies, including 50 indicators in 15 components, was presented. Then, based on the results of the quantitative method, four groups of customers were identified in Meymand Rose and Rose Festival. Enjoying nature, weather, and flowers and plants are among the motivations that are common among all four groups; in other words, it was the common feature of all visitors to this festival. However, in the separated groups, the factors have a significant dispersion.In the first group, the three factors of accessibility, hospitality of the destination, and spending time with friends are among the unique factors that have attracted them to this festival. This group constituted almost 37 percent of the participants in the research.The second group, which included almost 27 percent of the sample of festival tourists, with a sense of loyalty to the event and satisfaction, considers this festival a platform for social interactions and feels a sense of national pride by attending it.The third group is attracted to this festival with patriotic motives and the aim of learning, excitement, and making memories, and the festival’s popularity has been one of the main reasons for them. Finally, the fourth group of this festival has chosen a suitable place for photography and a space to enjoy holidays and relaxation with the intention of diversity in experience.In this context, the most significant difference between the present research and the previous studies is related to the classification of factors affecting the tendency of tourists, so that in none of the mentioned researches, the factors influencing the attraction of event tourists to local festivals have not been reported in a comprehensive category.Therefore, it is recommended to relevant provincial and national policymakers and patriot service providers to pay attention to the extracted effective indicators as the most key factors in their service strategy by recognizing the important characteristics of each category of tourists.
mahmud jome pour; narges kiyumars
Volume 7, Issue 17 , March 2012, , Pages 73-92
Abstract
In the recent years, tourism has been recognized as one of the prominent strategies of rural development and poverty reduction especially in developing countries, and has been broadly attended by policy makers and practitioners. However, tourism has been an object of severe criticism by researchers and ...
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In the recent years, tourism has been recognized as one of the prominent strategies of rural development and poverty reduction especially in developing countries, and has been broadly attended by policy makers and practitioners. However, tourism has been an object of severe criticism by researchers and practitioners of rural development for being the focus of attentions in excessive and partial ways, lacking roots in development theories. With a critical approach, this research aims to investigate the capitals of Zeeyarat villagers and to evaluate the tourism impacts on the sustainable livelihood development in Zeeyarat village – in Gorgan County, Golestan province. This research is descriptive-analytical in nature using a case study method to investigate the impacts of tourism on the village development. The Time frame of the research is November 2010 until august 2011. Data are derived through various sources such as: questionnaire-based household survey, interviews, observations and secondary sources. Conducting the survey, questionnaires were distributed among 150 rural families which were selected by random sampling from among the total of 575 village households in 2011. Semi-structured interviews were also carried out with 18 individuals. Also two PRA sessions were held in order to obtain more detailed perspectives on tourism experiences in the village and its associated transformations, being a complement to the information obtained from household survey. Afterwards, Content analysis was adopted to analyze the collected data. Predetermined categories and themes employed in the analysis were based on the SLFT framework. In addition, the quantitative data from the questionnaire-survey (related to the livelihoods outcomes or sustainability) were analyzed using the SPSS software version 17.
Edris Babakhanzadeh; Sedigheh Lotfi
Abstract
Rural tourism is one of the growing sectors in tourism industry thatcan play an important role in creating jobs, revitalizing rural life andpreserving various historical heritages of rural areas, and ultimatelyshaping an integrated and sustainable development. This paper aims toinvestigate the different ...
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Rural tourism is one of the growing sectors in tourism industry thatcan play an important role in creating jobs, revitalizing rural life andpreserving various historical heritages of rural areas, and ultimatelyshaping an integrated and sustainable development. This paper aims toinvestigate the different socio-economic and environmental impact oftourism on the village of Qouri Qaleh in the province of Kermanshah.This place attracts thousands of tourists annually due to its uniquenatural and historical heritages. The research is based on descriptive –analytical methods. A field work was conducted to collect the requireddata with the help of 150 questionnaires which were distributedamong residents of the village, using random sampling. Data wereanalyzed via SPSS. Results revealed a positive opinion of the ruralresidents about the economic impacts of tourism such as employmentopportunities and increase in people’s income. However, tourismdevelopment has led to land speculation and a rapid land-use changeat the cost of agricultural decline. Also, degradation of environmentby water pollution and overuse of rural natural resources, have creatednew challenges for tourism development in this village. From socialpoint of view there has been a considerable decline in rural urbanmigration, increase in people’s knowledge and improvement of ruralhousing. At the end, the paper presents some recommendations fortourism management and balanced development with respect to thecarrying capacity of the area.
mahmud jome poor; narjes kiumars
Volume 2, Issue 7 , March 2005, , Pages 87-120
Abstract
In the recent years, tourism has been recognized as one of the prominent strategies of rural development and poverty reduction especially in developing countries, and has been broadly attended by policy makers and practitioners. However, tourism has been an object of severe criticism by researchers and ...
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In the recent years, tourism has been recognized as one of the prominent strategies of rural development and poverty reduction especially in developing countries, and has been broadly attended by policy makers and practitioners. However, tourism has been an object of severe criticism by researchers and practitioners of rural development for being the focus of attentions in excessive and partial ways, lacking roots in development theories. With a critical approach, this research aims to investigate the capitals of Zeeyarat villagers and to evaluate the tourism impacts on the sustainable livelihood development in Zeeyarat village – in Gorgan County, Golestan province. This research is descriptive-analytical in nature using a case study method to investigate the impacts of tourism on the village development. The Time frame of the research is November 2010 until august 2011. Data are derived through various sources such as: questionnaire-based household survey, interviews, observations and secondary sources. Conducting the survey, questionnaires were distributed among 150 rural families which were selected by random sampling from among the total of 575 village households in 2011. Semi-structured interviews were also carried out with 18 individuals. Also two PRA sessions were held in order to obtain more detailed perspectives on tourism experiences in the village and its associated transformations, being a complement to the information obtained from household survey. Afterwards, Content analysis was adopted to analyze the collected data. Predetermined categories and themes employed in the analysis were based on the SLFT framework. In addition, the quantitative data from the questionnaire-survey (related to the livelihoods outcomes or sustainability) were analyzed using the SPSS software version 17.
