Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
department of business management , University of Mohaghegh Ardabili
2
Professor of business management, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran.
3
Associate Professor, Department of Business Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Urmia University, Urmia,
4
Associate Professor, Group of Business Management, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran
Abstract
Urban smart tourism (UST) development and its associated strategies are being progressively acknowledged as tools for more competitiveness, accelerated growth, and optimized environmental sustainability in numerous cities around the globe. Previous surveys have been typically confined to the developed regions or the main factors influencing tourism development and its benefits, but the barriers to UST development in the developing cities and countries have been to date overlooked, to the best of the authors’ knowledge. To fill the gaps in the existing literature, the present study reflected on the major challenges facing UST development in Tabriz, Iran, and delineated the barriers in this respect. For this purpose, a qualitative interview, constructed on Grounded Theory (GT), with a semi-structured questionnaire containing open-ended items, was performed upon recruiting 16 key informants, and then the data were analyzed via MAXQDA 2018. The study results demonstrated that the barriers to UST development in Tabriz, Iran, could be examined from infrastructure-related, governmental/institutional, political, economic, sociocultural, environmental, and marketing-related perspectives. The main challenges at the macro and micro levels were then explored to provide the policymakers and governors of tourist destinations with a comprehensive insight to improve UST development plans.
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