Pages: 10-26

Abstract

Nowadays, many of the policy-makers and development planners recount tourism as one of the main elements of sustainable development. The extant realities indicate that traveling in nature has incurred irreparable damages to the natural resources. The study model has been formed by making use of factors like favorable tourism resorts, sustainable development of tourism, metropolitan’s economical growth as the dependent variable and bioenvironmental, socio-cultural, economical and infrastructural factors as the independent variable. The present study aims at the calculation of the extent to which the bioenvironmental standards, socio-cultural, economical as well as infrastructure factors influence the selection of tourism appropriate zones and also designing plans for sustainable exploitation of the environment and keeping the nature intact as much as possible. To do so, a library research method, interviews with the specialists and Delphi technique have been applied on a sample of 20 individuals including the urban planning experts and environment conservation specialists to gather the required information. The required statistics and information have been made available to the experts in the format of questions posited within questionnaires. The scales obtained though running Delphi method have been assessed and weighted comparatively through taking advantage of analytic hierarchy process (AHP). then, each of the scales underwent a valuation process by making use of geographical information system (GIS) software within the regional area of concern to the present study. The results of the study, after the obtained layers overlapping analysis, indicate that the bioenvironmental scale takes the first position with the highest effectiveness after which socio-cultural, economical and infrastructure scales are placed in the second priority. Next, after the main scales’ overlapping was evaluated, the zones prioritization was offered in line with the development of the facilities and the conveniences. The present study intends to provide guidelines by way of which natural resources sustainable utilization, economical booming and residential stability could be facilitated in such a manner that it will finally positively influence the region’s development and prosperity.