The mediating effect of strategic thinking between strategic leadership and tourism marketing

Abstract

Despite the current security state of affairs in Iraq, tourism companies tend to attract many tourists by diversifying into religious tourism which is different to seasonal tourism in the Asian nations that depend on the Hadj and Umrah. They tend to get year-round tourism that operates internally and externally. There could be two hundred million Shiites wanting to visit the Republic of Iraq. In addition to the holy cities of Iraq and the urban center, the country has various religious order shrines. Therefore, companies must search for factors that could contribute to creating a positive impact on the growing numbers of tourists. This research aims to identify the mediating effect of strategic thinking between strategic leadership and tourism marketing. A structural model was built to test the relationships between the variables by adopting a structural modeling method, and a questionnaire was adopted as a main tool for the study. The results indicate the importance of strategic thinking for strategic leadership in making tourism marketing decisions that lead to sustainability.

Keywords

• strategic vision
• human capital
• ethical practices
• effective organizational culture
• tourism marketing