نشریه مطالعات اجتماعی گردشگری
سال چهارم شماره 1 (بهار و تابستان 1395)

Tourist overnight stays is a key factor in decision making process for tourists and it has a fundamental importance for tourism destinations. Length of stay is one of the most important determinants of tourism which affects the economy of a region. Mashhad is one of the tourist destinations which its tourists and pilgrims was increased in number but their average length of stay was decreased recently. According to statistics, about 75 percent of pilgrims and tourists of Mashhad stay less than a week and only 25% of them are staying more than one week and the overnight stay average of Mashhad pilgrims is 5/43 days. The main objective of this study is to identify the socioeconomic factors affecting the overnight stays of tourists and pilgrims in Mashhad. For this purpose, 692 questionnaires were completed randomly among tourists and pilgrims of Mashhad in spring 2015. Data were evaluated by Ordered Logit Model. The length of stay (the dependent variable) is classified into three groups; less than five days, between 5 to 7 days and more than 7 days. Results showed that the type of trip (Lonely), the frequency of traveling to Mashhad , the number of family members accompanying during the trips, food preparing ways and education level, have significant negative effects and the type of transportation (train) and income level (between 10.000.000 – 20.000.000 IRR) have significant positive effects on tourists and pilgrims overnight stay in Mashhad.

This study aims to identify and compare domestic tourists’ motives of travelling to Isfahan between men and women. The population of this research was domestic tourists who had traveled to Isfahan during April and May 2016, which among them a sample of 400 tourists was randomly selected. The data was collected by a questionnaire consists of 40 questions. To analyze the data, exploratory factor analysis and independent t-test were used. The results revealed nine travel motives for domestic tourists; historical and cultural motives, visiting relatives and friends, shopping, accompanying family and friends, recreation and having fun, low-cost trip, city attractions, enjoying a safe travel, and work motivation. The results also showed that there was a significant difference between men and women in terms of historical and cultural motives, recreation and having fun, shopping, accompanying family and friends, domestic attractions, and enjoying a safe travel. The results also demonstrated that there was no significant difference between women and men in terms of enjoying a safe travel, visiting relatives and friends, and work motivation.

Mashhad is one of the largest religious tourism markets in Iran and in the Muslim world. Sustainable development of this market is dependent on mutual satisfaction of service providers and tourists as customers. One of the important sectors of tourism services is shopping and souvenirs, which is mainly provided by retailers. Therefore, this paper tries to identify the tourists’ perceptions of these retailers in Mashhad. In the field of customer satisfaction, customer perception of service provider- customer interaction, is one of the dimensions of service qualities which determine tourists’ shopping experience. For data collection, a random number of 410 pilgrims who have visited the holy shrine of Imam Reza were asked to describe retailers in Mashhad. Collected data was analyzed by quantitative and qualitative content analysis method, pilgrims’ answers were categorized and then the frequency of each category was calculated. The results revealed that three categories of Profiteering, Deception, and Geniality, respectively include 40.7, 36.3, and 27.1 percent of the responses, which are the highest frequencies among the traits attributed to retailers. This could mean that pilgrims’ image of retailers is a person who uses deception and geniality strategies for his profiteering goals. It seems that temporal characteristic of tourist-buyers, as well as tourists’ insists for discounting, lead retailers to "flexible deception" strategies which more guarantee their interests.

Amongst different tourism fields, senior tourism has been focused due to its competitive capabilities and advantages. The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive framework to identify and investigate direct and indirect influences of any of the effective factors on senior tourism industry development. The new phenomena of Senior Tourism – originated from increase in leisure – has been gradually developed in all over the world and the same is much important among different tourism fields In the present study, firstly we have considered the literature of senior tourism processes, process-oriented identification aspects and indexes. In later stages, the relations between aspects and indexes have been determined by means of a modern analytic methodology titled “Interpretive Structural Modeling”. Consequently, this has been analyzed in an integrative way. The results indicated that accommodation security, peace, and comfort are the major factors for senior tourists’ well-being in Senior Tourism Development Model, which has to be focused in the preliminary stage The results of Interpretive Structural Modeling indicated that the most important influential factors on senior tourism development from the scholars and professors’ point of view that have captured levels one and two respectively include: accommodation security, peace, and comfort for senior tourists’ well-being in level one and satisfaction with hotels’ quality, services, health, accessibility, accommodation facilities, planning, and comprehensive travel attentions for senior tourists in level two

Tourism in Hormoz Island through its plenty tourism capabilities was developed increasingly and women are in the frontline of interaction in the hospitality business. As regards the enactment of general bills which considers the Hormoz Island as part of Qeshm free zone in Islamic Parliament, new conflicts could arise between development, traditional and conventional structures and networks of women in Hormoz Island as the number of tourist arrivals and private sector investors may increase. Accordingly it is essential to study the network of women relationships in Hormoz Island who are vastly involved in tourism practices. This research aimed to detect and analysis the relation between women who are employed in tourism and non- tourism sectors of Hormoz Island by using Network Analysis Approach. The data were gathered by querying women who are employed in tourism sector (including 13 women in cuisine and 10 women in handicrafts sector) and non- tourism sector (including 8 women in sewing sector). Then the data were imported to Excel spreadsheet and the networks based on in-degree centrality, out-degree centrality, eigenvector centrality, and status indices were drew and analyzed by Visone software. The results show that, women who are employed in tourism sector have more interconnected relationships rather than those who are employed in non- tourism sector; whereas tourism or non- tourism employment have no effect on power index of women but their power was affected by their organization and relations to power centers out of Island.

Tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world. In both developed and developing countries, tourism is supposed to be a viable means of raising the economic activity of rural areas. The main aim of this study was to investigate the beliefs of rural community about the effects of rural tourism development in Fash village, Kangavar County. The population of this study was, the rural people in the Fash village (1925 villagers) that 225 of them were selected through systematic random sampling. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire which its face validity was confirmed by a panel of experts, and the pilot test was conducted to assess the reliability. The results of factor analysis showed that the impacts of rural tourism development effects were categorized in three different factors: cultural, economic and environmental. These three factors explained 55.3 percent of the total variance of rural tourism development effects. Also, means of rural community belief to social and economic effects of rural tourism development have been significantly more than the optimum mean. One negative effect of rural tourism was some that tourists damage the environment. Rural people can solve this problem by creating teams as environmental supervisor or tourism supervisor. This action makes rural people have active participation on environmental conservation and management.