Distribution and Determining of Tourist Attractions and Modeling of Tourist Cities for the City of Isfahan-Iran

Problem statement: Cities have different attractions and usually have tourists. But Management and development sustainable tourist acti vities needs planning. Approach: This research used survey method and taxonomy analysis to study t he spatial pattern of tourist attractions in Isfaha n city. Isfahan city is chosen because of numerous to rist attractions and its importance at national an d regional level and also its multi role. The researc h was done from March to November 2008. Results: The result of statistical analysis shows that tour ist attractions in Isfahan can be classified into four groups. Conclusion: On the basis of the result of study, the spatial p attern of tourist attractions is obtained that can be used for the ma nagement and planning based on the result a spatial model of tourism consumption in large cities was de veloped.


INTRODUCTION
Cities have always been major destinations for tourists. The increase in the number of short trips to the cities shows that these destinations are one of the major tourist attractions [5][6][7][8][9][10] .
To understand tourism in cities, we need to consider cities as a product of tourism; a container that includes human activities and tourism activities [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] has classified tourist centers into following elements (Table 1).
Tourism has become an important economic source for planners and authorities in the field of city planning. It is one of the sources of competition in terms of investments, priority of goals, spatial organization of tourist spaces and establishing suitable commercial structure for tourist activities [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] . The important activity in planning and development of tourist activities is their classification and prioritization [8,9] .
In this research, classification of tourist attractions and their spatial pattern are determined on the basis of demand for tourists. There was a need to define the indicators of demand and supply for tourist activities.
To apply evaluation methods and to use taxonomy. In this research, tourist attractions and their spatial distribution are analyzed on the basis of indicators that are associated directly with tourist activities. Taxonomy analysis is used to classify tourist attractions into homogenous clusters [27] .
The case study for this study is Isfahan city which is the center of Isfahan province. Isfahan is an important asset and unique in terms of existence of historical, cultural and religious buildings in Iran, middle East and Isfahan has an important industrial and cultural role at province and national level. Isfahan is well known as tourist pole and as a multi function city [15] .

Literature review:
The tourism literature has increased in the past few decades.
Studies have been done in the field of consumption and spatial distribution of tourists on the basis of variables and different methods.
Cooper [4] , who investigated the spatial behavior of tourists on the Channel Island of Jersey, identified differences in the spatial patterns of tourists according to two variables: stage in Life cycle and socioeconomic status. He found, that low-income tourists tended to visit only the major tourist attractions, whereas higher income tourists visited lower-order (less visited) attractions, as well. Chadefaud (1981) investigated the time-space patterns of pilgrims and tourists to Lourdes and presented detailed maps showing the activity spaces of organized groups and individual tourists; the former were more concentrated and the latter were more dispersed. Chadefaud offers two explanations for this finding: (1) tourists in organized groups tend to be older and, therefore, it is harder for them to explore the city by foot and (2) organized groups tend to consist [24] More of pilgrims whereas a larger share of the individual visitors are tourists and not just pilgrims. Debbage [11] , who examined the spatial behavior of tourists in a resort in the Bahamas basing himself on Plog's [25] tourist typology, found that differences in the spatial behavior of tourists resulted from differences in their personality structure [25] Prentice [24] found that the more affluent sectors of English society are more highly represented among visitors to heritage attractions and, in general, the visitors to these attractions tend to be older [25] . Light and Prentice (1994) reported similar findings regarding heritage attractions in Wales [26,7] .
Dietvorst [3] , in his study of Enkhuizen, a small historic town in the Netherlands, identified several distinct tourist spaces based on differences in the main purpose of the visit to the town [3] . Montanari and Muscar"a [28] . outlined nine typical time-space profiles of tourists to Venice derived from a mix of the main purpose of their visit as well as other trip characteristics such as length of stay and previous visits to the city. Pearce [7] analyzed the characteristics, structure and functioning of three tourist districts in Paris. In his analysis he presented the differences of visitor patterns between international to French tourists. Jansen-Verbeke and Lievois [20] highlighted both the theoretical and applied potential of the analysis of different time-space use patterns of urban tourists, using the historic city of Leuven in Belgium as a pilot study.
Yet another study focusing on the differential consumption of tourist sights is [3] work on groups of Christian pilgrims of different denominations in Jerusalem. Bowman's work was followed up by Shachar and Shoval [29] who identified segmented tourist spaces based on the different national and religious groups visiting the city. More recently, Shoval [32] reexamined their findings using a statistical model consisting of 10 variables representing tourist and trip characteristics of visitors to Jerusalem. He concluded that religious difference was only one of the reasons explaining the differential consumption of tourists in Jerusalem and that the most influential variables explaining the spatial consumption of individual tourists are those related to the character of the trip, such as, length of stay in the city, main purpose of visit and number of visits to the city.
In summary, the literature are not abundant with researches on the subject of this study and the existing ones in most cases did not analyze the situations in large and multifunctional tourist cities.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Survey method was used to collect data. The data for this study was collected from inbound individuals tourists who had visited the city of Isfahan in Iran, using questionnaires. The questionnaires were administered before they left of the hotels and tourist center's, information were used. The questionnaires were filled between March to September 2008. Five hundred tourists were the sample of study. Each questionnaire included a list of the tourist sights visited in city, along with a section covering their personal details and trip characteristics ( Table 2). Also tourist attractions were defined; Taxonomy model is one of the ranking methods used in different fields. This method has been since 18 the century [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] Recently, using this model has become common. According to a number of indicators, The Method classifies data into homogenous classes [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] .
Taxononomy method is one of the methods of classification for planning and decision making. This method is able to classify data on the basis of indicators. Using these data, homogenous clusters can be defined and classified.
In this research, to classify tourists, tourists, (n) tourist attractions which have (m) indicators were defined: 11 In the above matrix, every column n×m is related to one observation and m indicators.
In the second stage Third step is to form the distance matrix. Considering matrix z, we can define the distance of every observation for every indicator and then calculate the combined distance for observations:   The smaller Cio shows the smaller distance of observation i from ideal observation. On this basis, the observation can be classified.

3:RESULTS
The result of analysis shows that tourist attractions can be classified into four clusters (regions) according to the number of visits and type of visitors (Fig. 1).

Region 1:
The central historical region and the area called Seeosepol (the name of a famous bridge (Fig. 1). The majority of tourist visit this Region 1. The study of visitors that groups from different educational level (elementary, high school and university) visit the tourist attractions in this region. Tourists who stay at Isfahan city for at most seven day, visit this region. No major difference was observed between the number of female and male:

DISCUSSION
Isfahan is unique city. It is an important historical center for main different group of tourists in the domestic and international in the world. The complexity of tourism Isfahan makes this city an excellent destination for urban tourism research .in this paper, the consumption of tourist attractions by tourists was analyzed toward to begin of 2000 period of prosperity in tourism in this city in middle east region. the data were analyzed using a statistical which enabled us to differentiate between tourist attraction based on the characteristic of tourist who visit it. however in our view, the approach presented in this paper is relevant to the analysis of tourism in other large cities and improve the planning and management in decision making for large tourism cities.

CONCLUSION
Isfahan is the heart of tourist centers in Iran at national level. Isfahan is a multi purpose city and every year, thousands people visit this city. Isfahan is a suitable city for tourist studies. To Since different variable play a role in hierarchical system of tourist attractions, there was a need the study these variables and spatial pattern of these visits.
This study was an attempt to use taxonomy model to find the cluster of tourist regions. Also, it was on attempt to determine the impact of variables (1) length of stay (2) education and (3) gender on the spatial pattern of visits. Study showed that tourist centers that are located in downtown and central part of city and are located in higher density Part of the city, receive more tourists. There is an association between length of stay, education, distance and visiting tourist Centers in the regions. Tourists who stay longer and have higher level of education visit more peripheral attractions Region 3 and 4 which are not located in central part of the city (Region).
The result of study showed that Region 1 with highest density of tourist centers has highest and more diverse number of tourists and there is not difference between the number of male and female visitors. These are special Christian and Jewish churches in region 3 and 4 that have Christian and Jewish tourists.
Using taxonomy model, four regions were determined that can be used for planning and management of tourist centers.