Religious Tourism, Requirements, Strategies and Consequences

Religious tourism is a form of tourism receiving more attention nowadays, whose development is on the agenda. This research is conducted with the aim of designing a theoretical model of the development of religious tourism in Iran, through a qualitative grounded theory. To collect data, profound and unstructured interviews were conducted with 18 experts familiar with the subject. These interviews were analyzed through open, pivotal and selective coding. Some components were extracted from these basic concepts. These components were then classified under the heading of causal factors, pivotal phenomena, grounding conditions, interventional factors, strategies and outcomes of religious tourism development. The causative factors affecting the development of the country's religious tourism were identified in the form of "management of attractions and events", "management of advertisement" and "development of the infrastructure and services fulfilling the needs of religious tourists", and interventional factors including "rules and regulations" and "planning of Religious tourism grand policies" were identified. Grounding conditions included indicators of "cultural conditions" and "economic conditions", and strategies include "marketing", "improving the environmental conditions, "human resource and training", " public-private interaction for the development of religious tourism", "systemic outlook ", and" attraction of investors". The identified consequences included "increasing the remaining of religious tourists", "reinforcing the basic motivations of religious tourists", "increasing the number of religious tourists," and "increasing the revenue from religious tourist’s visit of the country."