Investigating the motivational factors of health tourism in Lake Urmia

Investigating and analyzing motivations of tourists are some of the most important sections in tourism industry with the purpose of giving appropriate services to the travelers. Health tourism is a type of tourism which plays a main role in tourism development. Lake Urmia is one of the best tourist attractions from natural and adventurous view. Therefore, we can provide the conditions for the growth of tourism and regional development in different aspects with an approach of resource conservation if we recognize the potential of this area and make strategies for future. In order to do it better, it’s required to recognize the motivations of the tourists. So, the main aim of this paper is to investigate the motivations of tourists in Lake Urmia. The population of research includes all the travelers to Urmia City that 384 of them were chosen as the sample by the table of Krejcie and Morgan. The data was gathered by the use of questionnaires (with 0.925 Cronbach’s Alpha) of Alizadeh Sani et al. The questionnaires were given to the tourists by Cluster Sampling Method. To analyze the data, Confirmatory Factor Analysis was done in SPSS software. The findings reveal that 8 repulsive motivational factors of gain of knowledge and cure for diseases, increase of communications, thinking and taking advice, pursuit of peacefulness, increase of social cycle, sightseeing, meditations and getting to know with other cultures and also 4 attracting motivational factors of easy and various access to services, adventures, history and culture, and events and activities are recognized as the most important motivational factors among health tourist of Lake Urmia