Identifying the Implementation Barriers of Sustainable Tourism Development Policies in Iran

Abstract

The environmental and social effects of the tourism industry have been at the forefront of global issues. Therefore, there is a strong need to ensure the implementation of sustainable practices in the tourism industry, because the destruction of the environment and its social consequences have left destructive effects on tourism destinations. Despite the broad dimensions of these effects, sustainability considerations have been largely conceptual to date and have not translated into widespread industry practice. The purpose of this research is to examine the areas of non- implementation of sustainable development of tourism in Iran, despite the fact that it has been raised in more than two decades. using the interpretive paradigm, qualitative approach and content analysis strategy, the qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews were analyzed with MaxQDA software. The research data was collected from semi-structured interviews with 14 stakeholders of this industry in various government, private and academic sectors familiar with the procedures of sustainable development of tourism in a targeted and snowball method. Findings research data indicates the identification of obstacles to the implementation of sustainable development of tourism in Iran in the form of three main categories. These three categories include government obstacles, socio-cultural obstacles and also obstacles in the supply sector, which were identified and categorized from the 22 primary codes emerging from the text of the conducted interviews. The results were presented in the form of a table and a MaxQDA tree diagram.

Keywords

• sustainable development
• tourism
• barriers
• content analysis
• maxqda