Assessing the status of cultural heritage tourism using hierarchical analysis Process (study case: Historical Works and Buildings of Kalat County)

Cultural tourism heritage with the purpose of visiting immovable tangible historical monuments –i.e. historical buildings, hillsides, sites, and fabrics- is among the most popular categories of cultural tourism that establish coherence between the old, and new physical structure and portrays the landscape of region in the best possible way by filtering various development frameworks.The county of Kalat Nader in the Razavi Khorasan province (region 7 of the national tourism regions) has undergone gradual cultural changes over time that have consistently contributed to the advancement and development of human civilization. It also portrays a rich history and brilliant experience of the glory of traditional architecture. Despite its splendid history, this region suffers from a less than ideal management due to introduction, preservation, and restoration of immovable historical monuments. Therefore, cultural heritage tourism development in this region would not only restore its cultural-historical dimensions and bring it prosperity in this field, but it would contribute to the comprehensive development of the county from social, economic, and political dimensions through the prosperity of urban-rural activities, job creation, increased attendance and social interaction, reinforcement of intercity and provincial relations, and consolidation of the northern bounds of the country. The present study aims to evaluate the current state of cultural heritage tourism in the region seeking to take a step toward moving on from the current state, resolving the prevailing problems, and tackling the challenges ahead in this area. 

The present study is applied research in terms of the goal, descriptive-analytical in terms of method, and was carried out through desk research (to study the theoretical and experimental background), and field research as means of data collection.With a 10–20% excess distribution of the estimated 96 participants, questionnaires were sent to a sample of experts chosen using snowball sampling and a sample of users chosen through simple randomized sampling in order to gather data for a field survey. Research reliability was examined by surveying cultural heritage tourism experts and professors, and the changes they deemed necessary were applied to the questionnaires before distributing several questionnaires among two aforementioned populations which indicated an inconsistency coefficient smaller than 0.1 for the AHP questionnaire distributed among experts, and a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.951 for the questionnaire handed out to users, thus confirming the reliability of both questionnaires. 

An Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) performed in Super Decision software, ordinal Likert measurement in Excel, and integration of two sets of data obtained from users and experts were used to study the current stage of cultural heritage tourism in Kalat Nader County (relying on immovable historical monuments). For this purpose, pairwise comparisons were made between criteria and components based on Saati’s nine-point scale, proposed weights were obtained by calculating the arithmetic mean of scores, and the state of each criterion was obtained by multiplying its weight by the mean score of its sub-criteria (on a Likert scale of -2 to +2) which indicated the favorable condition of only nine out of 32 criteria.The final score of each component was determined by multiplying the mean score of its criteria by its weight. This calculation resulted in a final score for each component of -0.0685 for the county's current cultural heritage tourism situation, where the negative sign indicates unfavorable conditions. Improvement and enhancement of the components of tourism infrastructure (A2), credit and budget (E2), health and hygiene in the environment (F1), tourist support services and facilities (A1), and tourist markets (E1) were revealed as the leading priorities for users and experts in the development of cultural heritage tourism of the region. 

Seeking to develop an accurate understanding, and contribute to the comprehensive improvement of cultural heritage tourism (immovable and tangible) in Kalat Nader County, the present study first studied various opinions, and approaches to cultural heritage and tourism notions to discover the concepts, components, and criteria they shared and collected the respective sub-criteria. The current stage of this type of tourism was studied in the region based on the opinions of users and experts, and the ranking and effect of each component in terms of getting out of the current unfavorable conditions were identified as a basis to present a favorable and ideal vision in line with the current state of the region and prepare and compile fully practical strategies, policies and projects accordingly and in line with the realization and promotion of the prioritized dimensions and components in the long-term development of cultural heritage tourism in the county.