The Identification of the Potentials and the Key Drivers in Promoting Cultural Tourism with an Emphasis on Handmade Carpets of East Azerbaijan Province

Nowadays, art tourism is one of the markets with special interests, the prosperity of which can play an important role in the development of Iran's tourism. Among the applied arts of Iran, handmade carpet has a historical background and a high reputation in the world. East Azarbaijan Province, as one of the historical centers of Iran's handmade carpet production, has been selected as a case study of this research. The current research pursues two main goals, which are: introducing the potential of East Azerbaijan province for the development of cultural tourism with an emphasis on handmade carpets and identifying key factors for the development of cultural tourism with an emphasis on carpets in East Azerbaijan. In this research, the qualitative method (thematic analysis) and the structural analysis research method with the help of MicMac software as a future research studies have been used.The results of the thematic analysis illustrated that East Azarbaijan province has a great potential for the development of cultural tourism with an emphasis on handmade carpet with four main themes of human resources, historical importance of Tabriz carpet, attractions and social culture. Additionally, the MicMac software output demonstrated that the variables of organizing educational programs and empowering carpet traders and producers for carpet tours, organizing educational programs and empowering tourist guides for carpet tours and creating financial incentives for them, and targeted and digital advertisements are the most effective variables.