Exploring the Preferences of Iranian Geotourists: Case Study of Shadows Canyon and Canyon of Jinns

Abstract

Compared to other parts of the country, the region of Central Iran still remains mainly outside of major tourism flows even though there are significant geosites with great value for geotourism development. Two of those sites, the Shadow Canyon and the Canyon of Jinns, have excellent qualities for the development of this form of tourism in the future. The goal of this research is to gain information about the preferences of Iranian geotourists and to determine the current state and geotourism potential of Shadows Canyon and Jinn Canyon located in Central Iran by applying the modified geosite assessment model (M-GAM). The results indicate that Iranian geotourists consider rarity and the number of viewpoints the most important when choosing which geosite to visit, while the least important are tour guide service as well as hostelry and restaurant service. The results also show that more attention should primarily be concentrated toward promotional activities and basic tourist infrastructure construction in the future to attract even more tourists to these and other geosites in Iran.

Geological Features for Geotourism in the Zanjan and Hamadan Area, Northern Iran

“…Furthermore, authors found that the understanding of a given area results in a better rating given to it by tourists. These findings are similar to ones from [18] which observed that Iranian geotourists deemed the rarity of a geosite and the number and quality of viewpoints as most important reasons for visit. The promotion of valuable geological sites should be part of bigger projects meant to develop tourism in poorly developed areas.…”

“…Hypogene caves are found mainly in the Northwest, the Central and Easter zone, where they are associated with the igneous activity, and the Zagros zone. [18,33]).…”

“…Figure 2. The structural map of Iran with the position of the investigated caves (adapted from[18,33]). …”

Saline Soils: A Potentially Significant Geoheritage of the Vojvodina Region, Northern Serbia

“…This new methodology has its roots in previous assessment models and studies, all mainly related to resources such as geoheritage [4,[38][39][40][41][42], spas and hot springs [43] and cultural heheritage [44][45][46][47][48], and their use for tourism. These methods have been succesfully applied numerous times in the assessment of various geosites [49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68], spas [43,[69][70][71], and sites of cultural heritage [44,47,48]. The majority of tourism related subindicators were derived from these existing models and been adapted in this study for saline soil assessment, while the subindicators Geomorphological attractiveness, Pedodiversity, Biodiversity, Endemic and relict plant species and Ambience were introduced by the authors of this paper, based on the opinion of experts.…”

Towards a Better Understanding of Motivation and Constraints for Domestic Geotourists: The Case of the Middle and Lower Danube Region in Serbia

“…Even though motivation and constraints have been widely studied in tourism, the existing literature directly related to motivation and constraints in a geotourism context is very limited. There are studies regarding the typology of geotourists and their preferences [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59], but research on geotourism motivation and constraints still remains to be explored in a greater extent.…”