Barriers to community participation toward touirsm development in Shiraz, Iran

This study deals with concept of community participation, which originates in the developed world. In particular, it analyses and explains the barriers to community participation for tourism development in the context of Shiraz, Iran. It was found that there are operational, structural and cultural barriers to community participation in the tourism development in local communities in Shiraz; although, they do not equally exist in every community and while, these barriers tend to exhibit higher intensity and greater persistence in the new district of Shiraz. The tourism industry in most developing countries is faced with barriers and constraints. It is the intention of this study to bring discussion to barriers of community participation in tourism development. A lack of community participation has been identified as important barriers to effective tourism development in third world countries especially in Iran. In this way, I review literature on the barriers of community participation and discuss the related concepts of community participation, with particular attention to how they may apply to tourism development. Then I illustrate its barriers in Shiraz city. The study applies a visual representation to analyze the context of how local people have participated in tourism development