The Qualitative Analysis of Yazd Tourist Routs with Emphasizing on Arrival Hierarchy

In tourism planning, it is important to consider how the tourist is traveling to or back from the target location. What is important in making and completing tourism routes, is the orders or arrangements made for tourist arrivals, that here is called ‘arrival hierarchy’. These routes are considered at various levels: (a) Entering the city/sites through the urban entrance routes such as the passenger terminals, airports and stations; (b) Passing through the urban routes and reaching at the accommodation/resorts; and finally (c) Visiting the tourist attractions of target destinations. The tourism studies have mostly focused on the third aspect of this travel arrangement, and less attention has paid to the first two items. Considering the historical context of Yazd city on the World Heritage List and having quite a lot of tourist attractions, many plans and programs have been proposed for tourism prosperity, while less attention has been paid to plans that focusing on the necessity of tourist arrivals, and the following evaluation of existing traveling routs and their key factors.Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify and analyze the possible arrangements/hierarchy make for tourist arrival in historical city of Yazd. The main research question arises here is that, what arrangements have been made for tourist arrival in city of Yazd? And what key factors do effect on this? To answer these questions this study used a qualitative and descriptive, applied research method. First of all, the results show that the entry of tourists using road transport’ is not appropriate compared to the rail and air transport, that is all because of lacking clear and defined urban boundaries. On the other hand, on road transport, the entry of ‘mental and intuitive’ receptions are stronger than rail and air transport, while, the ‘physical entry’ is the same in all three categories. The tourist routes are not only confined to the network of attractions, and two other important components related to it are, ‘The [urban] entrance points and the connecting routs of these entrances to the tourist resorts. In other words, in a city like Yazd, which has drawn the attraction of many tourists by registering its own ‘historical texture’ on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the mere presence of significant attractions, historical context and appropriate tourism facilities are not enough, but rather, a network of arranged-based tourism routes or briefly ‘Arrival Hierarchy’ plays an important role in tourism industry.