Determining Effective Indicators on Seasonal Pattern of Sport Tourism Destinations Case Study, Ardabil Province

Seasonality of tourism is obvious, especially in cold tourism destinations which is so called winter tourism destination. The purpose of present study was to discover a theoretical structure & deliver a comprehensive pattern about seasonality phenomenon of sport tourism destinations in Ardabil province. This study is a practical one. It's worth mentioning that our study was conducted in a new field & no comprehensive investigation has been done which covers overview of seasonality about sport tourism destinations. Thus, this research was conducted using qualitative approach and based on systematic around theory method. Statistical population of this study consisted sport management experts, tourism and economy experts, department of cultural heritage & tourism managers, department of Sport & youth managers, provincial government managers, municipality managers, parliament members & tourism agencies managers of Ardabil province. Mixed of some theoretical sampling methods were utilized to select the samples of this study, qualitative interviews were conducted to gather information in our study. Data and codes reached theoretical saturation following 21 interviews. Statistics analysis were conducted systematically by using thematic analysis method in Nvivo 12 Plus software. Finally, 75 codes were identified after analyzing data which were classified in 6 main classes based on their importance. The results of present study provide the politicians & planners of this province with adequate approaches to expedite the process of developing tourism destinations economically in Ardabil Province.