Geotourism
Marziyeh Esmaeelpour; manijeh lalehpour; Maryam Mohammadi
Abstract
As a special form of tourism, ecotourism plays a vital role in sustainable development, and many environmentalists have suggested it as a strategy to protect natural resources. This research evaluates the competitiveness of ecotourism and the potential locations for peri-urban resorts in Maragheh County ...
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As a special form of tourism, ecotourism plays a vital role in sustainable development, and many environmentalists have suggested it as a strategy to protect natural resources. This research evaluates the competitiveness of ecotourism and the potential locations for peri-urban resorts in Maragheh County using the Pavolova model and fuzzy logic. The findings reveal that among the nine positive factors identified by the Pavolova model, the historical and cultural monuments, stratigraphic locations, and caves are considered to be the most important positive factors, and lack of infrastructure, deficit of financing to expand and inadequacy of prices to the services are among the most important negative factors affecting the competitiveness of the county. The overall ecotourism competitiveness rating for Maragheh is 1.52, categorizing it as "good." To site selection for the resorts, first, thematic maps for various indicators including elevation, slope, vegetation cover, distance to rivers, soil type, land use, geology, and access to transportation networks, city and ecological regions were prepared. These thematic layers were analyzed using the fuzzy gamma operator to create an integrated map identifying suitable areas for ecotourism development. Results indicate that over 46.9% of the county's area is classified as very unsuitable for ecotourist resorts, while approximately 24.5% is unsuitable. Areas with medium suitability cover 16.5% of the county, while suitable and very suitable locations accounting for 9.4% and 2.7%, respectively. This data suggests that Maragheh possesses favorable conditions for establishing ecotourism sites. Finally, four potential sites for the construction of ecotourism resorts have been proposed.
