An Analysis of the Ecotourism Marketing in Golestan Province

Ecotourism is regarded as a form of tourism of postmodernism era, so that it can be considered as the second major variety of tourism which, at domestic and foreign levels, attracts many tourists based on market demand trends to tourism destinations. Ecotourism as a variety of tourism can increase cooperation, its economical effects, protecting the environment, sustainable development, and dynamism in local and regional economy using environmental potentials which in its turn requires a strong marketing. The present study employed a descriptive – survey design using library studies. The participants of the study were 130 tourists of Golestan province from Gorgan, Gonbad, Aliabad Katoul, and Kordkuy for this kind of tourism. In terms of data collection, it is considered as a field study and finally in terms of generalizability of the findings it is a kind of survey. In this research, the items of the questionnaire, in two sections, were based on personal and behavioral characteristics and included nine "bases" of marketing, a combination of ecotourism and tourism. In order to determine the reliability of the instruments of the study, a pretest was conducted. The calculated Cronbach's alpha for the main scale of the questionnaire, i.e. identifying the patterns of ecotourism marketing in Golestan province, was 0.72 which showed the acceptable reliability. The applied statistical methods in this research include one-dimensional Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, one sample T-test, two-samples T-test and Friedman test for processing the obtained data. The results based on the nine "bases" priority indicated that there were some deficiencies in advertising, partnership, planning, and location. Furthermore, on the basis of the findings, a mathematical model was proposed.