Tourism Industry Essay -- Urban Development, Rural Areas

Tourism industry is influenced by various factors including sociocultural evolution and political relationship. Particularly after the Islamic Revolution of 1978 in Iran, a new policy on tourism brought new conditions of tourism with emphasis on pilgrimage tourism. Generally, tourism is known as one of the essential element of rural development. In Iran, there are many sacred places where are regularly visited by pilgrimages. Some of the holy places are located in rural areas, and they are attractive to many visitors. In the undeveloped rural areas, the community suffers from several socioeconomic problems including poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and even depopulation. Sometimes the rural development is ignored by state planning, in the favor of urban development. The Government’s open market policy on agriculture[if it is open, why government]. These problems lead to the stagnation of economy, and eventually the degradation of the quality of life in rural areas. Rural tourism provides opportunity to create jobs and to diversify incomes for rural households. In recent years, the local government has considered the tourism activities. Since 2005, the state authority of Iran has been playing a leading role in the development of rural tourism. The Tourism Sample Village (TSV) is a main project to study the possibility and potentiality of local resources. In addition, the TVS focus on the development of rural tourism and the encouragement of local inhabitants. Rural tourism is a sustainable program to support the local society and to conserve the local environment. In other words, the TVS acts as a pivotal basis to establish a sustainable local tourism in the country (Clarke, Denman, Hickman & Slovak, 2001). Rural tour... ...and low level of income. The unsuitable traditional agrarian system exacerbates this situation; rural lands are no longer supportive for local households. As a result, this condition is the main reason of poverty; hence, per capita rural income is less than national average. Rural areas in Iran suffer from low public services, high unemployment rate, and high emigration rate; these factors jeopardize the whole structure of life. As a result, tourism is as a supplementary approach to reverse the decline in the productivity of rural areas. Rural tourism offers solutions to many of the problems facing rural areas such; these include economic growth, sociocultural development and environment development. Therefore, tourism is an integral element of sustainable rural development policy. These effects of rural tourism are indicated in Figure 1 (Sharpley, 2002).