Tourism, Public Policy, Tourism Policy, Policy Implementation, Gilan Province

The current study set out to identify the influential factors involved in implementing public tourism policies in Gilan province, Iran. To this end, this developmental qualitative research applies an inductive approach and follows the interpretive-constructivist philosophy. The study’s population consisted of experts in the field of tourism, public policy, Gilan studies, and geography, out of whom some twenty experts were selected and interviewed using purposive snowball sampling. According to the findings of the study, technological, cultural, social, economic, and political-administrative factors were found to have contributed to the implementation of the public tourism policy in Gilan province. In this regard, the political-administrative factor was found to comprise bureaucracy reduction, education, and human resources development and improvement. Moreover, it was revealed that the social factors included strengthening social responsibility, increasing public and non-governmental organizations' participation, proper communication of the executive department with residents, and enjoying social capital. On the other hand, the results showed that the cultural factor consisted of utilizing cultural symbols, developing localized policies, and emphasizing the cultural structure of each region and that the technological factor included the emphasis on media advertisement and strengthening technological infrastructure. Finally, the economic factor was found to comprise participatory governance, proper financial planning, and proper budgeting. The main achievement of this research is its focus on the implementation aspect of policy-making and the recognition of various cultural, technological, social, economic, and political-administrative factors in the successful implementation of tourism policies, suggesting that in addition to economic factors, some other factors also contribute to the effective policy implementation, a fact which has been neglected in many similar studies.