Prioritization of the Factors Affecting Sport Tourism Development

Today, tourism and sport enjoy a complementary interrelationship directly affecting the nations` economy. Also sport tourism is, nowadays, considered as the most lucrative industry worldwide. In addition, it may affect all the social strata economically and politically. Thus, needless to say that much more attention should be directed to the industry through clear-cut policies, visions and constructive plans in this regard. To this end, in this paper, the authors investigated and offered the guidelines for sport tourism development in Zanjan from economic, social and cultural perspectives. This was an applied research carried out as a field study. The statistical sample was divided into 2 groups: 1) Experts including physical education teachers, cultural heritage and physical education department employees and, 2) Customers including different sportsmen and sportswomen traveling to Zanjan. The research tool was a 43 item researcher-made questionnaire in Likert scale whose reliability and validity were confirmed by the board of university professors. We applied descriptive to describe the demography and T-test and Friedman to determine the differences and prioritize both groups` viewpoints regarding sport tourism development in Zanjan.