Designing a Model of Competitiveness of Tourist Destinations Using Social Networks

Tourism as an effective and influential industry in communities has been able to attract the attention of policy makers and planners. This industry is a broad activity that has important economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts, and each can be discussed in its place. The purpose of this study was to design a model of competitiveness of tourism destinations using social networks. In-depth data interviews were conducted using foundation data theory and interviews with experts to identify components related to the research topic. Interviews with experts continued until saturation, with a total of 12 interviews. According to the approach of Strauss and Corbin, three steps of open, axial and selective coding were applied to analyze the interviews. The findings showed that the main categories included tourism infrastructure, tourism strategy formulation, positioning in social networks, quality of tourism services, tourism branding, tourism destination management and tourism marketing.