Space Administration of Tourism Destinations in Rural Areas

Rural tourism is also considered as a part of tourism that is located in a peripheral economy that not only does not promote rural and local areas, but also creates environmental and social imbalances in these areas, resulting in very little benefit; and, as a result, this economic activity (Rural Tourism) creates very little benefit for the villagers, and the major benefits and costs return to the mother cities and large cities of the Third World, and ultimately to transnational corporations (Holland et all, 2003). In this regard, paying attention to planning (specially space planning) becomes necessary. This kind of planning should particularly be considered as an effective approach to the issue of tourism space organization. On the basis, the present study looks for the space administration of tourism destination in the rural areas of Mohammad Abad-Zarrin Gol area (the city of Ali Abad Katoul) as one of the tourism destinations. The methodology of the study is quantitative and its method is descriptive, and the data have been collected through a documentary and field manner. The statistical population included 20 rural tourism destinations in Mohammad Abad-Zarrin Gol area in Ali Abad Katoul city. It has been used the AHP method for rating factors, the Prometheus method for final score and ranking the destinations, and cluster analysis method for leveling the tourism destinations; as well, to determine the functional area of rural tourism destinations, GIs point of deflection in the sofware environment has been applied. The results of the study showed that the disproportion in the distribution of rural tourism destinations in the intended area of the study is one of the important challenges of the space administration of tourism development of this area.