Investigating the development of Iran's tourism industry with emphasis on the efficiency of this industry

The development of the tourism industry is especially important for developing countries, which have many problems, including unemployment and the single-product economy. In the meantime, Iran has a land of four seasons and a civilization of several thousand years, in terms of unique historical, religious, cultural, natural. For this purpose, considering the high capabilities and potentials of the country in the tourism sector, the purpose of this study was to investigate the development of the tourism industry by calculating the efficiency of this industry in all provinces of Iran separately for domestic and foreign tourists. For this goal, the annual tourism statistics and information of the provinces of the country during the years 2011 to 2017 were used and to estimate the efficiency, a new technique of fuzzy data envelopment analysis was used. The results of this study showed that the efficiency of the provinces in the domestic tourism sector is higher than the foreign tourism sector and among the provinces, only four provinces, out of 31 provinces during the years under study in the domestic tourism sector They have been efficient and no province has achieved one efficiency in the field of foreign tourism in 7 years. According to the results, the development of the tourism sector in both categories through the transformation of infrastructure and extensive publicity at the national and international levels should be a priority for those in charge, and officials can, with special attention to the foreign tourism sector, The development of the tourism sector.