The Study of Effective Factors in the Development of the Tourism Industry with Emphasis on the Competitive Advantage of Maritime Tourism Destinations in Iran (Case Study: Mazandaran Province)

Background and Theoretical Foundations: Tourism has an efficient and effective potential in the economic, social, and cultural growth of countries, especially developing countries such as Iran, which, if implemented, can lead to development. Iran has a significant and unique potential in terms of tourism attractions, so that the capacity of this country can be compared with countries such as Greece, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and some other ancient countries. As an invisible export of goods and services, due to its effectiveness on the process of production and employment, the Tourism industry is one of the most important and most profitable industries of the world and can play a significant role in meeting foreign exchange earnings and economic growth, and development of countries. Methodology: The objective of conducting the present study is to present a model to realize the competitive model of the tourism industry. In this study, the indicators of the Crouch and Ritchie model were used to create a framework that includes the views of experts. The reliability and validity of the research were confirmed through statistical methods to establish the primary indicators along with the defined sub-indices. The statistical universe of the study includes the tourism experts, including university professors, experts employed in the organizations related to tourism, in two sections of governmental and private, who have sufficient acquaintance with the Mazandaran region. The sampling method will be available sampling with the Cochran formula. In available sampling, the researcher uses the available samples, and it is an inexpensive and available sampling method.Findings: The findings of the study show that the rating of factors effective on attraction of tourism destinations of Mazandaran Province are inheritable Cultural resources, built resources, supportive and situational factors, natural inheritable resources, policy making, planning and development, key resources and attractions, condition of demand, management of tourism destination, ability of controlling expense, public infrastructure, ability of concentration and differentiability, respectively. Therefore, it is inferred that, concerning importance towards, other factors effective on attraction of tourism destination of Mazandaran province, competitiveness of destination has less priority.Conclusion: The results show that three main factors are effective in the development of marine and non-marine tourism in Mazandaran province. These factors include primary factors such as heritable cultural resources, heritable natural resources, and built resources. Secondary factors include policy-making, destination planning and development, tourism destination management and supporting situational factors. And tertiary factors such as public infrastructure, demand conditions, key resources, and attractions. This study finally evaluates the destination's competitiveness based on cost control, differentiation, and focusability. The results of the Friedman test show that the highest priority is given to heritable cultural resources with an average score of ۱۱.۸, followed by built resources with ۸.۰۳ and supporting and situational factors with ۳۱.۷. The next priorities include inherited natural resources (۷.۱۶), policy and planning (۷.۱۴), key resources and attractions (۶.۸۱), demand conditions (۶.۲۶), tourism destination management (۵.۸۸), cost control (۵.۵۸), public infrastructure (۵.۴۸), focusability (۵.۲۷), and finally, differentiation with an average of ۰.۰۶.

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Keywords: Marine tourism ، destination competitiveness ، differentiation ، Friedman rating ، Mazandaran