Market Demand for Literary Tourism (Case study: Kerman Province)

Literary tourism consists of a type of cultural tourism that allows tourists to travel for the purpose of identifying and obtaining cultural and literary values. Literary tourism provides visitors with the opportunity to explore tourism and literature at the same time. The present study aims to investigate the literary tourism potentials of Kerman province; consider the strategies which can promote literary tourism; and measure the domestic tourists' tendency towards literary tourism. Qualitative-quantitative methods were used in this applied research. In the first step of this research, in order to identify the potentials and the strategies to promote this type of tourism in Kerman, using the snowball-sampling method, experts in the fields of tourism, literature, culture, and art were interviewed, and then the results were analyzed through thematic analysis. According to the experts' ideas, four strategies that consist of product development, conglomerate diversification, policymaking, and marketing and market penetration are considered suitable strategies for promoting literary tourism. In the second part, a questionnaire was designed to assess the domestic tourists’ tendency towards activities and attractions of literary tourism and tours in Kerman. The quantitative results were analyzed using SPSS software. The results illustrated that domestic tourists have a high desire to participate in literary activities and tours in Kerman province. It is worth mentioning that all indicators except "participation in storytelling workshops, creative writing, songwriting and playwriting" are very popular with tourists.