Development of Urban Night Tourism in Iran; Comparative Analysis of Cities of Isfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz, Mashhad and Yazd

Tourism industrial, its benefits for a country -especially economic ones- has led communities to raise their great efforts to attract more tourists and create new opportunities in this area by optimal use of time and place for tourism development. So, various potentials of places were considered with respect to time factor. One salient topic in this area is ‘night tourism’. Night tourism has opened new chapter in the way of exploring potentials of regions for tourism development. Regarding the importance of night tourism in economic, social and cultural dimensions, appropriateness of basics, and great potential facilities in Iran -e.g. shrines, great historical and cultural works, ceremonies, and environmental desirability- this research attempted to give a comparative evaluation of five Iranian metropolises including Isfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz, Mashhad and Yazd for determining the priorities of planning and developing night tourism. Needed data have been collected through library studies and questionnaire. Evaluating situation and potentials of mentioned cities was done by experts in the field of tourism who were completely familiar with various aspects of tourism in different regions of Iran. In this respect, two questionnaires, consisting 17 questions about indicators of potentials of night tourism planning, were designed; the first questionnaire was intended to weight indicators through pairwise comparisons, and the second one to compare cities in respect of each indicator.The mentioned indicators were organized in four groups including ‘attractions and services’, ‘status quo of night city’, ‘environmental desirability’ and ‘night transportation system’. Analysis of data was done by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and RALSPI method. Based on calculated final scores of cities, Isfahan was identified as the first priority for developing night tourism with score of 0.7420. Tabriz was placed at the second position with the score of 0.2072, and Mashhad, Shiraz and Yazd located in subsequent status whose scores are 0.1865, 0.1494 and 0.0496, respectively. So, we can conclude that if there is a will to found and develop night tourism at national level, based on synthesizing tourism experts’ viewpoints, Isfahan is introduced as prior alternative among five studied cities.