Identification and Classification of Affecting Factors on E-Tourism in Iran

Abstract

Nowadays, tourism industry is emerged as one of the greatest industries in the world. The evolution of ICT in the past decades had large effect in the industry and led the emerging concept of e-tourism. Based on this situation it is recommended to study the e-tourism area as an important research field and also develop the approaches and mechanisms for enabling tourism industry through electronic and virtual solutions. Hence, this study aims to identify the factors affecting on e-tourism development in Iran. To this end, using questionnaire data gathered through executive or technical managers of tourism agencies (public/ private), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) has been exploited to test the research hypothesis. According to research results, these factors can be classified in five main categories which respectively, are governmental and managerial policies, software and applications, infrastructure and hardware, social and cultural factors and finally supportive systems. Finally, some managerial and administrative recommendations have been offered to promote e-tourism development in Iran.