نشریه مطالعات مدیریت گردشگری
پیاپی 14 (زمستان 1389)

For the past two decades, with the advent of sustainable development paradigm in tourism, concerns have been raised about the undesirable and destructive effects of mass tourism, and in this context many empirical studies and actions have been undertaken to operationalize this concept and its evaluation models. On the other hand, the manner of implementation and assessment of this progress has introduced a lotof challenges to the concept. This paper seeks to answer this key question: based on dimensions and effective indicators of sustainable development of rural tourism, what level of sustainability thehistorical-cultural villages of the country possess? We aim to develop a practical method for evaluating and monitoring the progresses made towards sustainable rural tourism development (SRTD) in terms of quality of human and natural systems, and to evaluate the sustainability level of tourism development in the historical-cultural villages of Iran during a specific period of time. With a descriptiveanalytical methodology, and with utilization of barometer and sustainability radar, we surveyed the locals', tourists’, and authoritie's opinions to assess and measure the progress towards the mentioned goal. Results indicated that the social and economic dimensions of tourism in these villages are more sustainable than environmental aspect, and that the historical-cultural villages of Iran have a relatively poor level of sustainability in general. Therefore, in order to advance towards SRTD in historical - cultural villages, it is necessary to create balance among the main elements of SRTD: fulfillment of local residents’ interests and needs, satisfaction of tourists, and maintenance of environmental values.

Issues regarding Competition first started when Adams Smith published his famous book "Wealth of Nations". Until late 1980s there weren’t any theoretical frameworks for analysis, maintenance, and improvement of the competitiveness of a country or an industry, so all the economic analyses about competitiveness were based on variedindicators. To date, researchers like Porter (1980), Gilbert (1984) and Poon (1993) have proposed various strategies for identification of tourism destination competitiveness factors, but Crouch & Ritchie’s model has been the most comprehensive of all. With the use of Crouch and Ritchie's model, this paper aims to investigate and rank the factors affecting tourism competitive advantage of Chabahar region. The research was performed during theyears 2009 - 2010. Results displayed prioritization of five indices of Crouch and Ritchie's model as following: Destination Policy Planning and Development; Destination Management; Core resources and Attractors; Supporting Factors and Resources; and Qualifying and Amplifying Determinants. Also findings indicated that factors such as climate, beautiful beaches and landscapes, security are among the strength points, while factors like visitor management, crises management, recreation centers, and marketing are of weak points of the region.

For the positive social cultural and economic effects that tourism entails, it is turning into the fist leading industry in the world, giving rise to a considerable range of opportunities such as job creation, foreign exchange and gain of income.This research investigates two factors, tourist’s satisfaction and loyalty, in the region of Sarein. It is applicable regarding the goaltype and methodology employed is correlation. Questionnaire is used as the main tool in gathering information. Statistical population of the research consists of the tourists who traveled to Sarein in August. Owing to the unknown number of tourists (Statistical population), available sampling method was employed. Also, correlation coefficient was utilized to analyze the questions, to confirm or rule out the hypotheses, and also to evaluate the strength of the relations. Findings displayed a positive relationship between ‘organizational and environmental factors’ and ‘satisfaction’, and also between these three factors and ‘loyalty’, (R= 0/71). As a result institutional and environmental factors increase satisfaction and consequently loyalty of tourists, leading to their return to the region and spread of word of mouth. In the end, improvement of the environmental and institutional factors was suggested.

Cluster development strategy is one of the prosperous methods of organizing Small & Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). This method has been playing a significant part in regional development of various countries for more than three decades. This research first surveyed the conceptual framework of tourism clusters and then analyzed Anzali as a tourism cluster based on the four specifications of business clusters (geographical concentration, sectorial concentration, co-operational relations, and common opportunities and threats). ‘Location Quotient Technique’ and ‘Cooperation Matrix’ were respectively used for analysis of ‘geographical and sectorial centralization’ and questionnaire forms were employed for evaluation of ‘co-operational relations between business unites’ and ‘common opportunities and threats’ assessments. Findings reveal: tourism economic sector of Anzali stands in the ‘basic’ level and holds Location Quotient of 1.02; tourism businesses have common opportunities and threats, but inter-enterprise cooperation relations are weak. Finally, strategic policies are proposed based on current position and future opportunities of Anzali tourism cluster.

Tourism is widely recognized as an important economic sector. No matter what the economic climate, tourism has a significant impact on global and local economies. Tourism has been recognized as a complex system. Therefore, business management in the tourism industry critically needs to consider supply chain perspectives to integrate the fragmented nature of this industry. Moreover, development of tourism industry and its negative environmental impacts force companies to adopt sustainable strategies. This article reviews related literature and presents an analytical model in order to identify potential factors which influence theenvironmental strategic decision-making process. We investigated the influence of these potential factors on tourism industry and particularly on the travel agencies of Iran. Thus, analytical model was employed to design a questionnaire based on which 15 Tour & Travel agencies of Tehran were investigated through semi-structured interviews. The results show that in the absence of organizational benefits, external pressures could lead to GSCM adoption; also that implementation of this strategy is prone to get limited by strategic myopia and some other organizational factors.

Present article investigates the influencing factors on service quality of tourism agencies located at southern part of Isfahan. The objective is to study the influence of factors, namely service characteristics, responsiveness, Kindness, reliability, customer Relationship management, appearance (facilities), price, technology, distribution, promotion, credibility, and warranty, on the service quality of tourism agencies. A self-structured questionnaire relying on servqual scale was designed and its validity was measured by Cronbach's coefficient alpha of 95.6%. Afterwards, hypotheses were tested on a statistical sample of100 individuals to find correlation between factors. The highest correlation coefficient was found to be between technology and distribution (0.837). The resulted ranking classification turned out to be as the following: 1.responsiveness, 2.reliability, 3.credibility, 4.warranty, 5.kindness, 6.service characteristics, 7.appearance, 8.price, 9.technology, 10.distribution, 11.customer relationship management, 12.Promotion.

In the recent years, deserts of Iran have been experiencing an ongoing boost of demand on the part of tourists. Given the sensitivity and fragility of these environments, accompanying the nonexistence of a comprehensive tourism development plan, the necessity for awareness and special attention to these areas has become highlighted. The present research based on tourism sustainability approach, tries to calculate the tourism carrying capacity of three desert destinations: Shahdad, Maranjab-Band e Rig, and Mesr-Farahzad. For this purpose, first by reviewing the literature and asking professionals’ opinions, the influencing indices on tourism carrying capacity of the regions were identified; afterwards, the ‘physical’, ‘real’, and ‘efficient’ carrying capacities were calculated for both extensive and intensive tourism zones. Results indicate that Maranjab-Band e Rig, and Shahdad have higher tourism carrying capacity in comparison with Mesr-Farahzadarea. Also findings show that these areas can improve their tourism carrying capacities by developing their infrastructures and services. Furthermore, the current ‘real’ carrying capacities of these areas were found to be over-loaded in the intensive tourism zones.