Economic development of Iran's tourism industry, and its comparison with neighboring countries mentioned in Iran Outlook 2025

Although tourism in today’s world is one of the prominent industries in respect to income generation, the facts reveal that countries fail to earn from it in proportion to their tourism attractions. In other words, there seems no meaningful correlation between dispersion of attractions in the countries and their income from tourism. As an example, although tourism attractions place Iran on the top-10 list, the country is situated among the least-earning in respect of tourism income. However, according to the planned vision, attaining the top economic position in the region is depicted for Iran in 2025. Now a question is to be answered that considering economic criteria, what is the country’s level of tourism development compared to its neighbors. We attempt to answer this question in the current study. To measure this, five indicators are used, including total contribution to employment, inbound tourism expenditure, government-specific expenditure, capital investment, and business travel and tourism expenditure. TOPSIS is used to integrate the aforesaid indicators. Results manifest that in the year 2000, Iran ranked 5 th in the region, while it fell to 13th place in 2005. Although it moved two levels up in ranking in 2010 to reach the 11 th, there is still a long way to achieve the first position in the region in such a short time (until 2025).