An overeview on tourism and its effects; a step towards sustainable development

Tourism is as one of the most important development tool in the world and at present, has recognized as the largest and fastest growing industry in the world that has endless development and growing paths. Tourism has different shapes and different types, that are vary depending on the environmental conditions. Tourism is conducted in an environment consisting of human and natural features. Human environment consists economic, social and cultural factors and processes. Natural environment, consist plants, animals and its habitat too. Since the human environment and the natural environment are integrated and human activity affect the natural environment. Therefore, achieving sustainable tourism is one of the most important issues in land management and planning and conservation of natural resources.

This research is in terms of the nature of the review, which has studied the subject by reviewing scientific sources and using internet databases, and tourism and related concepts have been studied.

Different types of tourism including cultural tourism, historical tourism, art tourism, religious tourism, rural tourism, nature-based tourism and ecotourism were introduced and studied, and guidelines and principles for achieving sustainable tourism were presented.

To achieve sustainable development, tourism planning must be sufficiently focused. Therefore, there is a need for tourism to be in a large-scale, integrated and dependent on cultural and natural resources, and tourist attraction policies should be guided from quantity to quality.