The traditional urban areas and its role in the development of cultural heritage tourism (Case Study: The historical areas of Sari)

This research is based on library and field study and its main purpose is to assessing the role of Sari historic areas in cultural heritage tourism development. The library studies include the theoretical framework and questionnaire design and field surveys include distributing questionnaires and collecting tourist’s opinions. According to Cochran formula, we distributed 410 and gathered 360 questionnaires. The validity of questionnaire is confirmed by academic colleagues and (Cronbach’s alpha=0.933) indicates high questionnaire reliability. In order to process data, we used SPSS software. Frequency distribution, averages and percentages were used to describe the data. Also one-sample T-test and Friedman were used for data analysis. Based on the results, architectural and historical monuments in Sari represent a great potential in development of cultural heritage tourism. But statistics show a significant gap between available capacity and level of heritage tourism development. The main reason for this situation is that all available capacity is unused. Therefore, refurbishing and entering valuable historical monuments in tourism cycle, restoring traditional face texture, mounting signposts at the entrance to the old city to guide travelers to review access routes, solving traffic problems, shifting government offices in the texture of measures is necessary.