Typology of Tourists and Tourism Products Based on the Resources and Potentials of the Community and Nomadic Areas

Climate change, modernization trends, meta-sectoral management, sick and Sanctioned economy, the failure to preserve the human-pasture-livestock structure, etc., have led to the fact that the nomads look for an alternative livelihood pattern and complementary economy in addition to traditional animal husbandry. One of these patterns is tourism. According to many researchers, all the components of nomadic life and livelihood are considered a capacity and resource for tourism. Therefore, these capacities should be identified, classified, and placed in the tourism product conversion cycle according to each land and nomadic group.

Purpose of the research: 

The current research's primary goal is to identify and typology of resources, products and tourists in nomadic tourism.

The current research is descriptive-exploratory in terms of its purpose and qualitative in nature. The statistical population of the scientific content research was produced in the field of "nomadic community and areas potentials for tourism". Therefore, data and information were collected in a library method. The literature review was based on extracting concepts related to tourism resources.

Geographical area of research: 

In the present study, the capacities of all nomads in the territorial area of Iran have been taken into consideration, which include 251,624 nomadic households in the form of 104 clans and about 565 tribes.

The findings showed that there are 50 sources and capacities for the formation of tourism products in the community and nomadic areas. They are gathered in 9 groups: hospitality, migration, livelihood structure (settlement system, food, clothing, music, indigenous knowledge), handicrafts, clan system, animal husbandry process, nomadic events, ethnic image and natural-geographical environment. Also, two major categories were natural landscape and cultural landscape. Four types of nomadic tourism services and products were identified as an authentic experience, authentic visit, symbolic experience and symbolic consumption. In the typology of tourists, four types were identified nomads, non-participatory visitors, semi-nomads and nomadic consumers. Finally, it was found that nomadic tourism is most compatible with cultural tourism and ecotourism.

All the components of the nomadic lifestyle have been formed in coexistence and adaptation to the climate and environment, as a resource for tourism can be programmed both within the nomadic areas in an original way and can be presented in the designed non-nomadic spaces. Considering that many of the identified capacities are somehow associated with the presence and role-playing of nomadic women, the main burden of transforming nomadic capacities into tourism products is on the shoulders of nomadic women. As a final recommendation, in this process, one should pay attention to the dangers caused by the commodification of nomadic culture.