International Journal of Social Science & Interdisciplinary Research_____________________________ ISSN 2277-3630

IJSSIR, Vol. 3 (7), JULY (2014), pp. 239-254

Online available at indianresearchjournals.com



THE ASSESMENT OF THE QUALITY AND SOCIO-CULTURAL
CARRYING CAPACITY OF URBAN TOURISM BASED ON THE
BEHAVIORAL PATTERNS OF THE TOURISTS AND HOST
COMMUNITY
(CASE STUDY: RAMSAR- IRAN)

BANAFSHEH M.FARAHANI ; AMIN MOSTAFA TALESHI**;
NASTARAN LALEH***

*ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN TOURISM MANAGEMENT,
MAZIAR UNIVERSITY OF ROYAN,
MAZANDARAN, IRAN.

**MA STUDENT IN TOURISM MANAGEMENT,
MAZIAR UNIVERSITY OF ROYAN,
MAZANDARAN, IRAN.

***MA STUDENT IN TOURISM MANAGEMENT,
MAZIAR UNIVERSITY OF ROYAN,
MAZANDARAN, IRAN.


ABSTRACT
Cities have a lot of tourist attractions and always attract lots of tourists. Therefore, the
development of sustainable urban tourism and its wise management requires planning. In
recent decades, the growth and development of tourism industry and adopting it as one of
the major economic activities from developed and developing countries, has made planners
to notice to two important issues for the development of tourism activities: first, increasing
the quality of tourism experience and second, efforts to preserve the interests of host
communities. The aim of this study has been assessment and promotion of tourism
carrying capacity in Ramsar in direction of sustainable development of urban tourism. This
research is from the type of development and its method is quantitative, analytical and
survey. In this research, the city of Ramsar is selected because of the existence of lots of
tourism attractions and its importance in local and national levels and because of being
multi role. The time range of this research has been the spring and summer in 2013. The
result of this research shows that tourism carrying capacity and quality of this city is more
that the real carrying capacity of this city from the perspective of tourists, although tourism
facilities and infrastructures of this destination is still in the development stage. Tourism in
this destination is in a stage that gradually its destructive socio-cultural impacts is
percieved by tourists and the number of tourists in this city are more than its carrying
capacity. Totally, it can be concluded that because of the rate of tourist arrivals more than
skeletal carrying capacity of this tourist destination, the host community is also felt the
negative and indesirable effects of tourism in socio-cultural dimensions. On the other hand,
the quality of tourism experience is decreasing in the city of Ramsar and only the existence
of important natural attractions have made tourists to be attracted to this city and
appropriate tourism facilities havent been able to play an important role in this field.


International Journal of Social Science & Interdisciplinary Research_____________________________ ISSN 2277-3630
IJSSIR, Vol. 3 (7), JULY (2014), pp. 239-254
Online available at indianresearchjournals.com



KEY WORDS: Assessment of Tourism Quality, Carrying Capacity, Tourist Attractions,
Urban Tourism.
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