The Role of Tourists in the Formation of the Identity of Tourist Destinations(A Case Study of Samen Region in Mashhad)

The increasing competition in the tourism industry has raised the need to pay attention to the development of special value for tourism destinations. Various external and internal factors are effective on society in the tourism destination. Most of the previous research has focused on the investigation of external factors such as awareness of cultural changes and even the type of dialect, social behavior, and identity of people. In this research, the role of tourists on the identity of citizens in the Samen region of Mashhad has been investigated. The research population included all residents and people who were in contact with tourists in this area, from among whom 195 people were selected as a sample. The results showed that the indicators of architectural-physical identity and urban texture had an average higher than 3 due to the presence of tourists. The overall results showed that the presence of tourists did not have much effect on the characteristics of the social and cultural identity of the residents of the Samen region. Concerning the indicators of architectural-physical dimensions and urban texture, this effect proved to be more significant.