Conservation Strategies and Tourism Development in Iran’s Heritage Sites (Fuzzy Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Approach)

Nowadays, heritage tourism is considered one of the important and developing forms of international tourism. Heritage sites are the main source of heritage tourism. However, striking a balance between tourism and cultural heritage is the main concern of the officials and decision makers involved in cultural heritage in order to keep their importance through their renovation and maintenance and creating attractions for tourists. This research identifies the strengths and weaknesses of tourism development in Iran’s heritage sites as well as opportunities and threats facing it, with an emphasis on the conservation. Also the authors have used the combination of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method with goal programming (GP) and fuzzy theory, to prioritize conservation strategies of tourism development in Iran's heritage sites. This is an applied research in terms of results. To gather the data (by using purposive sampling method), an expert survey was conducted. The results show that three major conservation strategies that are: “coordination between the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization, the government (Police, Municipality, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Intelligence, Ministry of Roads, Judiciary Branch, etc.), and other countries and international organizations for conservation of sites”; “setting guidelines for preservation, restoration, maintenance and management of heritage sites” and “complying with the conservation standards declared by the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization and other national and international regulations", and "the capacities of historical sites for operations related to constructions (such as alteration of land use, road construction, etc.)" are respectively having higher priority in developing heritage tourism in Iran.