Ranking Tourism Attractions Based on Potential to Attract Tourists by Using Numerical Taxonomy Model (Case: City of Khoy)

Today, tourism industry is counted as one of the largest and most diverse industries in the world so that it is a major source of foreign exchange earnings, employment, creating social justice, cultural growth, welfare increase, and a field for private sector growth and a tool for infrastructure development. Having diverse natural and human tourism attractions, city of Khoy is one of the main destinations of tourists in Iran and Western Azerbaijnan province that attract many tourists annually. Given high tourism potential and diversity of attractions, it is important and inevitable to prioritize and identify tourism prone areas in this region. Thus, attractive tourism areas in this city have been prioritized in this research with descriptive-analytical method and by using numerical Taxonomy model. According to the results, Shams Tabrizi Tower in the city of Khoy has the greatest potential to attract tourists in the city. In contrast, despite Badlan waterfall and protected area of Marakan are pure natural attractions of city of Khoy with potential tourism power, in terms of attracting tourists, but lack of facilities, services and available infrastructure, and risk of natural hazards in these areas resulted in relative failure of these areas in attracting tourists.