Explaining Creative Tourism in the City Of Urmia with a Foresight Approach

Creative tourism is the last link in the tourism chain, and today we can see that demand is pervasive for creative tourism products. In this period, the desire of different nations has increased to invest in this sector what can provide competition. In this regard, to take more advantage of this industry, it is crucial to take creative tourism into account in Urmia City.

The current paper aims to provide creative tourism scenarios in Urmia.

The type of research is applied-developmental. The research method is foresight which surveys the opinions of experts and specialists through using a questionnaire based on the matrix of interaction. Fifteen individuals were selected based on snowball sampling. The MicMac and ScenarioWizard software analyzed the extracted data. Forty different factors have been used to analyze and evaluate creative tourism in Urmia, their relationships were evaluated, and critical factors were extracted. Then, experts confirmed factors in the form of hypotheses. They were classified and entered into the ScenarioWizard software. Finally, the scenarios were classified based on the hypotheses into the critically, consistently and optimally classifications.

According to the findings of the MicMac software, ten key influencing factors were identified. Findings of the ScenarioWizard also showed that 14 credible and probable scenarios (one scenario with a favourable situation, four scenarios with a stable situation and nine scenarios with a critical situation) were obtained for the future of creative tourism in Urmia in the 1404 Horizons.

According to experts, there are deplorable conditions for the development of creative tourism in Urmia. Hence, planning is highly crucial to reduce the adverse effects of these conditions. There is also this need to pay attention to the desired scenario or the development of creative tourism in Urmia.