Application Future-studie in development of urban tourism of structural analysis and scenario writing (Case study: khoy city)

Nowadays, tourism, as one of the key components, has a special role in developing societies and countries. Here, urban tourism - as a significant parts of the tourism industry - has a special place in improving the economic and cultural development of cities and has turned into one of the most important, exchange yielding, and income creating industries. Nevertheless, the development of this industry in cities faces some challenges and problems. This calls for a new and integrated planning to take advantage of opportunities and face the challenges ahead. Future studies can take very effective steps in planning for the development of urban tourism and mapping out the desired future of tourism, and by presenting proper solutions, it can stop the emergence of challenges and the realization of an undesirable future. This study was working towards in line with this purpose. In the present study, using Delphi technique, 36 factors were identified as the primary factors affecting the future of the development of urban tourism in Khoy. The structural analysis method was used with the help of MicMac software to extract key factors, where 12 factors were selected as key factors. Then, the probable situations were defined for each key factor. In the next step, to measure the effectiveness of the occurrence of the status of each of the factors on the occurrence or non-occurrence of other factors, a 33 × 33 matrix was designed and given to the experts. Finally, to compile probabilistic scenarios and to identify desirable scenarios, the data for this matrix were introduced into the scenario software. ScenarioWizard software reported 1406 poor scenarios, 4 strong scenarios and 13 credible scenarios by performing the needed analyses. Examining the credible scenarios showed a relative ruling of static, critical and undesirable situations over the desirable and ideal situations. Apart from the first scenario with desirable and progressive features, the rest of the scenarios do not show a desirable future in minds for the development of tourism in Khoy.