Strategies for planning domestic and international tourism development of Qom Province with emphasis on religious Tourism

Abstract: Tourism with its broad range of impacts including amongst other economical, environmental, social-cultural benefits and costs, is a global phenomenon, which has variously attracted the attention of public and private sector interests. Because of its propensity to generate substantial economic benefits such as employment, foreign exchange ,income and tax revenues etc. developed countries and developing countries and in particular ,have embarked upon tourism-related development policies .One such developing country is the Islamic Republic of Iran ,the policy-makers of which are seeking to expansively develop its tourism sector as part of dialogue of civilization and introducing Iranian cultural ,historical and natural heritage to the world as well as means of achieving economic diversifications. Iran’s rich array of cultural and natural recourses, many of which are unique, constitute considerable actual and potential attractions and, therefore render Iran as a significant cultural tourism destination. Thus the overall purpose of the present study is to examine tourism attractions and to give strategies for tourism development of Qom province which is one of the main religious tourism destination of Iran and the Shiite world as it houses a lot of various attractions and a great number of tourists travel to this city to visit tourism attractions of Qom province. This province has got a very strategic political, geographical and tourism conditions in Iran. Qom receives more than 12 million local, regional and international pilgrims, tourists and as more than 16 provinces land transportations are crossing Qom. Korosh and Daryosh Hakhamaneshi erected the 2500 kilometers kingship road with necessary equipment (including: passengers, guiding bars, hostels, numerous Caravansaries, special official's appointment for keeping the road…). Iranian showed that they highly attend to hospitality and tourism. Establishing numerous roads with necessary equipment in history of Iran including Silk Road in Ashkanian era and Karballa-Mashhad in Safavieh dynasty confirm this issue. In history, Iran has been one of the best countries for tourists as they mentioned in their itineraries. For example, Sharden, a famous French traveler in Safavieh era, wrote in his book in this way: "All over the world, there is no country like Iran for traveling either in respect of little dangers and safety of roads being watched precisely or low price of expenses thanks to large numbers of public building for passengers through out the empire, free residence in them, and existence of flat roads and bridges in impractical parts for country's caravans and passengers." There are one million and two hundred thousand tourism heritages and attractions in Iran which confirms Sharden's words nowadays. Tourism industry is so significant in economic and social development having been called "invisible export" by economists nowadays.Validerat; 20101217 (root