Prioritization of Rural Tourism Development Strategies from the Aspect of Spatial Planning: A Case Study of Gaykan-Aligoodarz County

Promotion in rural tourism, based on sustainable tourism development and using tourism as the economic engine of the region to improve life quality, is one of the most important issues that needs to apply appropriate and rational strategies, fit to the regional and local capabilities and the direction of spatial analysis. This study aims to explore strategies of rural tourism development in the Gaykan village, which is one of the target tourism villages in Aligoodarz County. The research method is descriptive- analytical which uses questionnaire to collect data. Sample data were about 184 people in the geographical area. Cochran formula was used to estimate the number of sample data. Sampling method is random and stratified sampling. In order to analysis and prioritize tourism development strategies, we used SWOT analysis model. The results show that, considering the evaluation of internal and external factors, Invasive strategy (max - max) has been identified as an optimal strategy towards achieving tourism development in Gaykan village