Optimal Strategy of Tourism Development for Rural Economic Development (By using SWOT Matrix)

This paper is regarded as an applied research in terms of objective and a descriptive research in terms of method in which a questionnaire has been designed based on the research goals and hypotheses and sent to the statistical universe. Also it is a field research in terms of data collection. As regards theoretical bases, library data collection method has been used. So, data has been gathered by referring to the related references, books, libraries, and so on. During research implementation, field method has been used to design the questionnaire and gather the opinions of the statistical universe members. The statistical universe comprises experts and managers of transport companies of tourism destination, passengers of tourism destination in the course of questioning period, and residents of tourism destination. To access these persons, we referred to the terminals in Tehran, Chalus, and Kelardasht, and the sample was selected by using simple random sampling method. Also to estimate sample size, Morgan table was applied. The number of universe was estimated 70 and according to the table, the number of questionnaires was determined 59. So 65 questionnaires were sent and 60 questionnaires were returned. This paper applied SWOT matrix method for determining strategic zone of tourism destination. Sub- strategies of the offensive zone were prioritized by using AHP method.The main result of this paper indicates that Kelardasht is located at the offensive strategies zone according to the SWOT matrix, and among sub- strategies, the strategy of establishment of a fund to support and manage attractive zones of tourism destination and visit taxes has the first priority among four introduced strategies

Keywords:

Strategy formulation , rural tourism , economic development