The effective Factors of Tourism Demand in Cultural-Historical Destinations: Case of Isfahan

Destination managers would like to have a better understaning of the factors affecting destination choice by tourists. In the conventional demand side models, factors such as the income level in tourist origin countries, the price level in the destination and the exchange rate have been introduced as the core effective factors. Here some important theoretical bases such as Lancaster’s theory of demand for multi dimensional products are ignored or not prefered because of the difficulties in practice. The following article would first focus on the theoretical basis of tourists’ destination choice and then will study the destination choice factors for tourists who visits Isfahan as a cultural historical destination. The sample volume was determined according to Morgan’s schedule for infinite societies, and the sufficiency of sample was checked by KMO statistics. The questionnaire’s face was confirmed by research team advisors and the reliability of questionnaire has been tested by Cronbach's Alpha test.Using factor analysis for a data set of 384 cultural heritage tourists, we found that: price level at the destination, authenticity and uniqueness of attractions, safety and security, attitude of local people and authorities toward the tourists, and level of tourism services at the destination are the most important factors in choosing cultural-historical destinations. The results indicate that 57.414 percent of all affecting factors on destination choice have been explained by the introduced factors in this paper. Key Words: