Identifying factors influencing on Sustainable Tourism Development using interpretive structural modeling (ISM) in Khorramabad

Tourism is regarded as a dynamic, diverse and clear activity as well as one of the growing parts in national economy system of countries. As a multi-dimension activity, tourism has many positive effects such as job creation, income acquisition, foreign exchange attraction as well as strengthening infrastructure. After oil industry and automation industry, tourism is the third source of income in the world. In spite of appropriate potential, Iranian tourism industry has not been able to reach an acceptable share in national income computation. As an attractive city, Khorramabad has created tourism potential and valuable inheritance, as a sustainable development pilot of tourism with global ID and an appropriate possibility for urban sustainable development based on tourism. The purpose of the present study was to analyze the factors influencing sustainable tourism development in Khorramabad in order to help tourism industry development and change the city into a competitive and sustainable international tourism destination. This research was an applied study with strategic developmental design. In this article, the factors affecting khorramabad tourism were firstly identified and the relative importance of key strategic factors was determined using Delphi method. Analyzing the identified factors, 14 factors with the highest important in tourism development of Khorramabad were selected. Then, using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM), the relation between tourism development and these factors was analyzed and the factors were ranked