A Future Study of Business Intelligence in the Tourism Industry

Despite potential tourism capacities in Iran, few foreign tourists visit Iran compared to the competing countries due to the lack of infrastructure, the existence of legal barriers, and the sanctions imposed against Iran. As considerable growth in the application of information technology to tourism is one of the main trends in this industry, this applied exploratory study sought to identify future scenarios of business intelligence in Iran’s tourism industry using both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the collected data. The population of the study comprised tourism, future study, and business intelligence experts, out of whom the intended participants were selected via judgmental sampling. The study was conducted in three phases. In the first phase, thirty effective driving forces of the prospective business intelligence in the tourism industry were identified by reviewing the related literature and interviewing the experts. In the next phase, the identified driving forces were screened and prioritized using the EDAS. To this end, the driving forces were screened via the Binominal test, twenty of which were eliminated from the analysis, accordingly. Then, the remaining ten driving forces were assessed using the EDAS method. Finally, the type of decision-making culture and the arrival of foreign tourists were selected as the final driving forces, which, together with the application of root definitions and the organization of consultation workshop, formed the basis of offering four scenarios, namely the prosperity, heterogeneity, the spider web, and the ice ages. Accordingly, the prosperity and ice age scenarios illustrate the best and worst conditions for the future of business intelligence in tourism, respectively.