Evaluation of Mashhad Religious Tourism Services from the Perspective of Tourists

The importance of tourism in modern times is highly dependent on the economic cycle. The importance of tourism in developing of economic activities is in a such way that some economists has called it invisible exports. The positive aspect of tourism are: increasing desirability of a region or place, increasing national and local pride and identity, providing new job opportunity, increasing the durability and stability of communities and etc. The negative aspects are: environmental and social conflicts, the increase of living cost for local people, the pollution of environment and etc. due to these features tourism topic has attracted many researchers recently. For increasing the tourist satisfaction, it is really important to provide a service package which is included in supply and demand for tourism services. Studying the trend of tourism in Mashhad, shows that this industry in Mashhad is faced with some leaps and bounds which is rooted in household economic and serving tourism services. This study is going to study the urban tourism with a systematic approach and wants to find the factors which are important in tourists’ satisfaction. The goals of this study are: understanding the socioeconomic characteristics of tourists, studying their satisfaction from tourism services and understanding the quality of tourists’ spatial knowledge and the impact of satisfaction on it. The research method is descriptive-analytical and data collection has been documentary. The sample size was calculated at 5 percent estimation by Cochran formula. The 400 calculated sample size were selected randomly among the tourists which were visiting Mashhad. The indexes of this study which studying the satisfaction of tourists are: the satisfaction of citizens’ behavior, buying daily needs, parking, availability of drinking water, the cleanliness of environment, availability of public urban bus and taxi, accommodation rent, the safety of holy shrine’s environment. Moreover, for studying the quality of mental map, they were asked to name the 5 best tourism resorts of Mashhad and then rank them based on their services. For analyzing the data ANOVA test and Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficient were used. 60 percent of tourists were men and 40percent were women. The highest number of tourists (40%) were at the age range of 25 to 35. Du to this statistic it can be said that most of the visitors are young. About 34.5% of visitors had under diploma education. About 19.5 percent of visitors which were the biggest group were from Tehran and the second highest visitors were from Isfahan. The average satisfaction of tourists is about 320.46. The highest level of satisfaction is related to the citizens’ behavior and the least satisfaction is related to the parking situation. Due to the ANOVA test (p=0, F=11.25) there is a significant relation between satisfaction and accommodation place. Pearson correlation coefficient shows that there is a positive relation between the age of the visitors and their level of satisfaction. Moreover, the results indicate that the behavior of Mashhadi people has a positive impact on the visitors’ tendency to spend their money. The results of Spearman test for understanding the relation between quality of mental map and the services which are served by these places, indicate that the more places serve services, the more the quality of their mental map is. Results indicate that age and sex are influenced on the amount of travel. Most of the visitors were satisfied by citizens’ behavior and the least satisfactions were about parking situation and the price of accommodation. Generally, it can be said that firstly, there is a significant relation between the satisfaction of tourists and the services which are served by tourism resorts. Secondly, there is a linear correlation relation between the age of visitors and their level of satisfaction. Thirdly, the better citizens behave with the tourists, the more they spend their money and finally there is a significant relation between the quality of services which are served in the tourism resorts and the visitors’ quality of mental map; also based on this fact they are more likely to visit that place again. Therefore it is really important for urban managers to boost the quality services which are served to visitors. They should also manage the price of accommodation in different parts of Mashhad and try to increase the public transportation in order to encourage the visitors to use public transport instead of their private car. They should also try to boost parking lots in the center of city but they must be careful because if they increase the parking lots without planning always there is this possibility that they may encourage people to use their private car.