Ranking the strategies of religious tourism development in Dezfoul city

Religious tourism is a kind of tourism that has important role in economic and cultural sustainability due to it's special circumstance and roots in religious culture. It so provides high capacity to develop tourism in different regions of the country. Hence, it is necessary to investigate current conditions and develop strategic planning based on region's strengths and facilities. Dezfoul city with 50 mosques and religious monuments as tourism attractions and a variety of religious rituals has an appropriate capacity to develop religious tourism. In this study the strengths and weaknesses (internal factors) and so opportunities and threats (external factors) in Dezfoul are investigated with SWOT technique and then ranking of the developed strategies is done with AHP method, and finally some suggestions for reinforce it in Dezfoul proposed. Research method is descriptive-analytical using library and survey studies. results show that according to established priorities from expert's opinions, using weakness and strength factors and balance of opportunity and threats is in middle state, it means using available opportunities and strength and so lowering weaknesses and threats is possible but this requires planning and boosting tourism infrastructures of city and enhance public awareness in understudy field. In addition, aggressive strategy is the most important strategy in religious tourism development of Dezfoul and reviewing strategy is the next.