Investigation of Obstacles and Strategies of Rural Tourism Development Using SWOT Matrix

Abstract

Decrease in rural area's population and increase in the urbanity rate in recent years is a result of poverty and the absence of proper access to resources of welfare and livelihood services. Optimum usages of environmental, economical and production potentials of rural areas for improving income and welfare can be efficient in reaching the goal of reducing the rural immigration. Rural tourism is a part of tourism market and is a source of employment and income. Also it can be presented as a significant tool for the socio-economical development of rural areas. To recognize the guidelines in this study for tourism development in Kore Shahbazi and Tassouj as target tourism villages in Kohgiloye and BouyrAhmad province of Iran, the internal factors assessment (Strengths & weaknesses) and external factors (opportunities & threats) and SWOT matrix were used. In this study, bioenvironmental; tourism; economical; socio-cultural; and legal-political factors were used in performed analyzing. According to this consideration, six tourism development strategies were determined for each village. Protection of village recreational attractions(ST strategy), developing infrastructure for tourism and introducing village recreational attractions to attract tourist (WO strategy) nature, historic and religious tourism planning (SO strategy) and planning for attraction-based tourism (WT strategy) were determined as tourism development strategies in target villages. Also, developing flora, bio-environmental management of natural resources, infrastructure development, increase in employment capacity, immigration control and native cooperation development in planning were determined as rural development strategies which play an important role in implementation of the tourism development strategy in the area.