Tourism Issues on Iran’s Public Policy Agenda

Abstract

Policy agenda setting significantly affects tourism policies, describing which tourism issues make onto public policy agenda. Given the considerable gap in studying this stage, this paper seeks to explore Iran’s public policy agenda between 2013 and 2019 focusing on different types of tourism issues. Conducting an archival study, data related to agenda indicators drawn from three institutional venues in Iran including legislative-led, executive-led and budget indicators. The results of qualitative content analysis of official documents showed that relatively a few numbers of the issues reached the agenda including those related to tourism management, developing tourism product, and enacting relevant rules and regulations. However, tourism marketing and tourism information management issues were less considered in the agenda setting process. It is argued that failure in getting different types of the issues on to the agenda could result in gaps in subsequent tourism policies, affecting tourism development.IntroductionConsidering Tourism as one of the fastest growing economic sectors, it is intorduced as an effective tool for economic development in Iran. Pursuing this goal, tourism policies play a vital role, since they determine the direction or course of action to develop tourism(Goeldner & Ritchie, 2009). However, the low contribution of tourism industry to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Iran (Bahmani & Namamian, 2021; Farzin, Abbaspoor, Ashrafi & Zargham Boroojeni, 2020) indicates that Iran’s tourism policies fail in pursuing their intended goals(Karoubi, Yavari Gohar, Zarea & Abbasi, 2020). Regardless of the quality of tourism policy, it is the successful transmission of tourism issues to the public policy agenda that assures policy formation in addressing these issues. In this regard, expolring agenda setting stage in public policy making could contribute to a better understanding of tourism policy making. Given the considerable gap in studying agenda setting, this paper seeks to explore Iran’s public policy agenda focusing on different types of tourism issues.Materials and MethodsThis study considers the status of different types of tourism issues on Iran’s public policy agenda over years between 2013 and 2019. Conducting an archival study, data drawn from three institutional venues in Iran including legislative-led, executive-led and budget indicators, looking for tourism related keywords in both title and context of the ofiicial documents. Qualitattive content analysis was used as the main method in two coding circles: open and axial coding. The emergent categories represent the main groups of the issues which made it onto the agenda.Discussion and ResultsThe relative share of tourism issues on the agenda was calculated through qualitative content analysis of 4800 officiacl documents including tourism policies, congressional hearings, tourism bills, Tourism proposals and the government spending. As a result, 486 documents were identified with focus on tourism issues. Minor changes in relative share of the issue on the agenda during 2013- 2019 reflect the failure in tourism agenda setting.Turning to the typology of the tourism issues, six categories identified: tourism management and organization, tourism product development, tourism rules and regulations, tourism marketing, tourism human resources and tourism information management. While the first three stood in the main category places in the most of the agenda indicators, issues related to marketing and information management has been less considered.ConclusionsUsing a variety of policy agenda indicators to study the transmission of different types of tourism issues to public policy process, this study differs from few past agenda setting research in the context of Iran in which only policies are explored.In conclusion, it is argued that the failure in getting different tourism issues onto the public policy agenda is one of the main challenges in tourism policy making and subsequently in tourism development in this country. Emphasizing on less considered issues as agenda setting priorities could effectively address the gaps in needed tourism policies. This paper suggests that participatory tourism management at macro level might facilitate the transmission of the tourism priorities towrads policy agenda.

Keywords

• "public policy agenda"
• "agenda setting"
• "tourism issues"
• "content analysis"
• iran