Feasibility study of tourism development in the villages of the summer resorts of Maneh and Samalqan County

Development planners consider tourism activities as a key element of sustainable rural development. Nowadays, rural tourism can create jobs, increase income, and ultimately can bring welfare and improvement of living conditions for villagers. The most important purposes of rural tourism development are economic development, social and spatial development of rural communities. Nowadays, with 200 million employees, tourism accounts for about 8% of total global employment and is one of the five main sources of foreign exchange earnings for tourist countries such as China, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain, etc. The present study is in applied form and in terms of the method is descriptive-analytical based on field studies. The statistical population of the present study is rural households and the guest population in the villages of Maneh and Samalqan districts which includes 1321 households according to the 2016 census. 266 people were selected as a sample by using Cochran's formula. The questions in the present study were set on the Likert scale and in five grades (very low, low, medium, high, and very high). The reliability of the research tool was obtained by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the studied components which are equal to 81%. The extracted data from the questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS software and by utilizing descriptive and inferential tests. In addition, the results of Kendall rank correlation coefficient for the Symmetric variables, economic and physical development indicated a significant relationship up to 99% confidence level. Also, the results of the Friedman mean comparison test illustrate the importance of each of the examined items and explain the significant difference up to 99% confidence level between them. It is worth mentioning that the results of the Kruskal-Wallis test also indicate a significant difference of 99% among the indicators of economic, social, and physical development of the studied villages.