Tourism Issues on Iran’s Public Policy Agenda

Policy agenda setting significantly affects tourism policies, describing which tourism issues make onto public policy agenda. Given the considerable gap in studying this stage, this paper seeks to explore Iran’s public policy agenda between 2013 and 2019 focusing on different types of tourism issues. Conducting an archival study, data related to agenda indicators drawn from three institutional venues in Iran including legislative-led, executive-led and budget indicators. The results of qualitative content analysis of official documents showed that relatively a few numbers of the issues reached the agenda including those related to tourism management, developing tourism product, and enacting relevant rules and regulations. However, tourism marketing and tourism information management issues were less considered in the agenda setting process. It is argued that failure in getting different types of the issues on to the agenda could result in gaps in subsequent tourism policies, affecting tourism development.