Ecotourism Development Strategies of Shadegan International Wetland based on SWOT Technique

Environment and its conservation in recent decades have gained serious attention of all people and the international community and the world. In this way international biologic environment and private protected areas are considered as protective units and there are the best areas for creation of ecotourism. The wetlands have great economic, social and environmental importance due to its natural and unnatural resources. Shadegan wetland as the biggest wetland of Iran with international importance is located at south of Khuzestan plain. This applicable-developmental survey aimed to consider the weakness, strength, opportunities and threats result in creating and developing ecotourism industry in the studied area and it analyzed the presented ideas by experts and tourists. In first step the internal factors (weakness and strength) and external factors (opportunities and threats) are identified. Then aforesaid internal and external factors were evaluated in the form of tables of internal factors evaluation (IFE) and external factors evaluation (EFE), scoring and weighting. For this purpose, analytical hierarchical process (AHP) and Super desision software are used.The findings showed that for developing Shadegan Wetland ecotourism it was essential to pay attention to a collection of strategies such as offensive strategies which are on the basis of QSPM analysis, strategy of introduction of high potential of ecotourism of aforesaid area for increasing investment of private and public sections With 16.178 points was the highest priority.