Projection of the Strategic planning of Iran rural tourism development

Today, tourism has become one of the most important economic sectors in many countries and governments have used various policies to develop tourism and its subsectors at different scales from local to national level. In the past decades especially since 1990s, experts and planners continuously have focused on the importance of rural tourism development due to the recession of agriculture sector and problems facing to the rural societies. In this regard, Iran With the plenty of attractions in rural areas can exploit from this great potential to improve itself economic situation. Therefore, this paper pays the general situation of rural tourism in Iran, and in particular with using of the quality and quantity steps (QSPM) in SWOT technique to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for rural tourism development of Iran especially for Dlfard. The method used in this research is survey and field studies method (130 samples from the tourists and residents population). This research able to present the appropriate strategies for Dalfard tourism development and because many villages in Iran are similar Dalfard in view of natural, cultural, social and economic features, we can generalize its results to others. The results indicate that the strength points of this region are over the weaknesses, so we hope to develop tourism in this region by application of the proposed approach. Favorable macro strategy proposed by this research is competitive strategy (with a total score of internal and external factors: 36/2 and 51/2). Also the result of quantity matrix is the third sub-strategy (with a score of 55/7) that focus on combining of the active participation of government to strengthen the private sector and NGOs.