The Analytical – comparative investigation of E-Tourism development indicators in Isfahan

Extended Abstract
1- Introduction
Tourism in Iran as an industry has very high capacity for growth and development. According to the World Tourism Organization, Iran ranked tenth in archaeological and historical attractions and fifth in natural attractions in the world. In 2008, about 2 million foreign tourists visited Iran, while in this year a total of 842 million tourists have traveled all over the world. According to experts' viewpoints, development of tourism in Iran has not achieved what it deserves. Iranian financiers' ignorance of the current tourism status, weak advertising and false and negative news of Iran are obstacles to the growth of tourism in Iran.
 
 
 
So, due to exist problems in the field of tourism in Iran and Isfahan city, itseemsthat e-tourism and development of new forms of tourism can largely overcome the problems in this field and improve the status of Isfahan in terms of tourism potential in the international level. So, this article makes an attempt to study the feasibility of virtual tourism in 14 regions of Isfahan.
 
2- Methodology
This Study is a combination of two technical branches, tourism and information technology (IT). Thus, it examines the impact of IT on tourism in the city of Isfahan to find the practical results of the implementing virtual tourism infrastructure.
The predominant method used in this study is analytical method based on statistics and new information. In this method, two questionnaires were used to consider the use of applied models in the feasibility and implementation of virtual tourism (The first one examined indicators of e-citizen in the implementation of virtual tourism and the second one examined the amount of citizen's belief in virtual tourism development). To integrate these indicators, SPSS software, Spearman and Pearson correlation were used.
 
3- Discussion
 The main benefits of Virtual Tourism can include:
 - Easy availability
- Ability to pay costs
- Accessible to all people
- Overcoming environmental - cultural obstacles and limits
- Elimination of the intermediary
- Elimination of time constraints and geographical boundaries
- Variety of forms and services
- Achieving sustainable developments (in line with environmental protection, prevention of infections and diseases, reducing damage to ancient monuments and cultural heritage)
Other benefits of virtualization can be the following:
- Minimizing physical disasters such as fire, the crashes, explosions, bombs and destructive  earthquakes.
The following were calculated for Isfahan city:
-        Operational capability of the virtual tourism in Isfahan
-        The average indicator of e-Citizen
On the other hand, the investigation of mean indicator of belief in virtual tourism in 14 regions in Isfahan show that 5.5% of citizensare in the low level, 45.2% are in the average level and 46.2% are in the high level of belief in virtual tourism.
 
4- Conclusion
The results showed that the regions 12 and 2 respectively have the highest and the lowest average of e-citizen indicators among the 14 regions of Isfahan. But the difference between these regions in this case is not very much. It shows that the city of Isfahan indicators is at the intermediate level in terms of the electronic literacy. On the other hand, the examination of the average amount of citizen's belief in virtual tourism in Isfahan shows that regions 5 and6 have the highest average belief to the development of virtual tourism and in the entire city 5.5 percent of citizens are in the low- level, 45.2 percent in the average-level and 46.2 percent in the high-level of believe in virtual tourism.