Ancestral Tourism: A Novel Market of Isfahan Tourism

AbstractSearching in family roots and traveling to discover genealogy with a leisure motivation is called tourism, which can not only create opportunities to introduce and preserve family heritage, but also diversify the tourism market. The present study pursued the following 3 objectives: 1) identification of the potentials of Isfahan City for promoting ancestral tourism, 2) introduction of suitable travel packages of ancestral tourism in Isfahan Province, and 3) identification of appropriate strategies for promoting ancestral tourism. This research was of an exploratory type with qualitative method associated with thematic analysis. The statistical population of the study consisted of the experts in the fields of history, tourism, and culture. The findings of this research illustrated that Isfahan City had the potential of promoting ancestral tourism due to the presence of famous families, who had migrated to this city throughout history, families, who were known for their professions, royal families, neighborhoods called other cities in Isfahan;, and immigrants and refugees throughout the history, as well as different past divisions of the country. In addition, the incoming and outgoing travelers and city tour packages could be introduced as the revenue-generating opportunities in the ancestral tourism sector in this province. Lastly, the 4 strategies of market penetration, product development, horizontal integration, and collaboration could be introduced as suitable strategies for the prosperity of ancestral tourism in Isfahan City.Keywords: ancestral tourism, Isfahan, genealogical tourism, roots tourism IntroductionNowadays, searching in family roots, as well as traveling and discovering genealogy with a leisure motivation is one of the aspects of tourism that can not only create opportunities to introduce and preserve family heritage, but also diversify the tourism market. Ancestral tourism has been proposed as one of the rapidly growing segments of the heritage tourism market (Basu, 2004; Santos and Yan, 2010), which was not noticed by academics in 2005 and was just introduced under the umbrella of cultural heritage tourism. The existing research literature demonstrate that the genealogical tourists are not a homogeneous group whose activities have been described by presenting a set of terms. Ancestral tourism is variously classified into genealogical tourism, heritage tourism, diaspora tourism, cultural tourism, and roots tourism (McCain and Ray, 2003, pp. 713-17; Timothy and Teye, 2004; Basu, 2004; Gaudry, 2007).It is noteworthy that Isfahan Province has been invaded by many foreigners throughout history and many ethnic groups, such as Georgians, Armenians, etc. have immigrated to Isfahan. In addition, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province and Yazd Province have been parts of Isfahan. Historical evidence has demonstrated that Isfahan has a great potential to organize ancestral tours. Therefore, the current research sought to identify suitable travel packages for the development of ancestral tourism in Isfahan Province and identify suitable solutions and strategies for the development of this new niche market of tourism from the experts’ points of view. Methodology The present study pursued the following 3 objectives: 1) identifying the potentials of Isfahan City for promoting ancestral tourism, 2) introducing suitable travel packages of ancestral tourism in Isfahan Province, and 3) identifying appropriate strategies for promoting ancestral tourism. This research was of an exploratory type with a qualitative method based on thematic analysis. MAXQDA software was used as a tool for data analysis. The statistical population of the study included the experts in the fields of history, tourism, and culture. The data were gathered through snowball sampling or chain-referral sampling as a non-probability sampling technique. After each interview, the data were coded until the codes reached a saturation point in the 16th interview and no new codes were added to the previous codes. Results and discussionThe research findings indicated that Isfahan had the potential of promoting ancestral tourism due to the presence of famous families, who had migrated to this city throughout history, families, who were known for their professions, royal families, neighborhoods called other cities in Isfahan, and immigrants and refugees throughout the history, as well as different past divisions of the country. In addition, the incoming and outgoing people and city tour packages could be introduced as the revenue-generating opportunities in the ancestral tourism sector in this province. Lastly, the 4 strategies of market penetration, product development, horizontal integration, and collaboration could be introduced as suitable strategies for the prosperity of ancestral tourism in Isfahan. ConclusionAncestral tourism is a journey that is done with the motivation of discovering and searching family genealogies. The results of our data analysis indicated that famous families, such as Kazeruni, Homayi, Sheikh Baha'i, etc., who had migrated to this city throughout history live in Isfahan City. In addition, being the capital of Iran, especially during the Safavid dynasty, and the 34-year rule of Mass'oud Mirza Zell-e Soltan, the first son of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, had made this city suitable for ancestral tours. There were also families in Isfahan, who were famous for their professions. Moreover, there existed some neighborhoods in Isfahan called other cities. The presence of immigrants and refugees throughout the history and different past divisions of the country were the other potentials that attracted visitors and genealogical tourists to Isfahan.The second purpose of the present study was to identify travel packages with the subject of genealogy. The results of data analysis using a qualitative method based on thematic analysis demonstrated that the design of packages for visits to this city and province with the subject of genealogy, including itinerary designs for the incoming and outgoing tourists, especially for Armenians, Georgians, and Iraqis, would not only help diversify the tourism market of the province, but also be a source of income for travel agencies and tour guides. It is worth mentioning most of the researches in the field of ancestral tourism (Pelliccia et al., 2018; Murdy et al., 2018) emphasized on incoming travel packages, while the city of Isfahan and Isfahan province had the potential of outgoing packages and city tours as well.The third goal of the current research was to identify appropriate strategies for the prosperity of ancestral tourism in Isfahan City. Ultimately, the 4 strategies of market penetration, product development, horizontal integration, and collaboration were introduced as suitable strategies for the prosperity of ancestral tourism in this city. Birtwistle (2005) also emphasized marketing strategy for ancestral tourism boom, which was confirmed by the results of this investigation. References- Agoes, A. and Par, M. M. (2016, May). Tourism Management in Cikondang Ancestral Hamlet. In Asia Tourism Forum 2016-the 12th Biennial Conference of Hospitality and Tourism Industry in Asia (pp. 78-84, Atlantis Press.- Alexander, M., Bryce, D., & Murdy, S. (2017). Delivering the past: Providing personalized ancestral tourism experiences. Journal of Travel Research, 56(4), 543-555.- Basu, P. (2004). My own island home: The Orkney homecoming. Journal of Material Culture, 9(1), 27-42.- Basu, P. 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