An Investigation of Domestic Urban Tourism Using Statistical Models (A case study of Kermanshah)

Tourism is one of the important industries and growing sectors in the national economy of the country. Urban tourism has recently gained attention by the researchers and also urban planners. The present paper aims to investigate urban tourism challenges in Kermanshah as one of the oldest urban cities with its unique geographical position in the western border of Iran. The city has a great potential to be developed in tourism industry and play an economic role in the province of Kermanshah. It seems that despite the high capacity of the city for tourism development, there are many hindrances for the growth of such industry. The methodology of the research is based on descriptive and analytical method by using statistical techniques. The data was collected by conducting a field work through questionnaire completion. The statistical society of the research was domestic tourists of Kermanshah and the number of the samples is consisted of 322 people. The socio-economic data was analyzed by applying SPSS and then were depicted via Arc GIS. The results revealed that there are some problems for tourism development like lack of proper advertisement and also the weakness of tourism infrastructures. The city has rich tourism socio-cultural elements which could help the development of the city’s economy. It is concluded that by developing the urban tourism, the region would bear less negative environment impacts and gain a more diverse economy.