Capacity Evaluation of tourism in IRI cultural diplomacy regarding Pakistani religious tourists

Tourism is a phenomenon that leads to the strengthening of communication between different cultures. With the common cultural contexts between nations, it is easier to achieve cross-cultural communication during tourism. If tourism has positive cultural effects on tourists, it turns them into indirect missionaries of the host society and ultimately leads to the strengthening of the cultural diplomacy of the host country in the target country. With this definition, tourism can activate many capacities in the field of strengthening the relationship between Iran and Pakistan and creating the strategic depth of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Meanwhile, religious tourism has a significant place among other types for Pakistani audiences.

The present article is applied in terms of the purpose of the study and qualitative in terms of methodology. Using semi-structured interviews, the researcher collected the opinions of experts on this issue and interpreted the obtained findings using thematic analysis method.

The existing capacities in Iranian tourism for Pakistanis (46 capacities in the form of 10 sub-themes), the obstacles to the development of Iranian tourism for Pakistanis (37 obstacles in the form of 7 sub-themes) and the solutions for the development of Iranian tourism for Pakistanis (23 solutions in the format) 6 sub-themes), were identified and induced.

Conclusions and suggestions:

 according to the interpretation of the findings, the potential capacities for the development and improvement of the arrival of Pakistani tourists, the obstacles on the way to the development of this matter and the solutions to remove the obstacles leading to statistics and finally the model of benefiting from this The capacities, its obstacles and solutions that lead to the improvement of Iran's position among the people of Pakistan and in a word to strengthen the cultural diplomacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in this country were extracted.

originality: 

According to the surveys, very few researches have focused on religious tourism in benefiting from it in the direction of Iran's cultural diplomacy. This issue is particularly novel in the case of our study, namely Pakistani religious tourists.