Mona Erfanian Salim and Osman Mohd Tahir
In regarding to sustainable tourism principles, a tourism island is assumed to provide tourists’ needs in different aspects. “Thus, among the shorelines of the Island, public open spaces that contain a lot of tourists should meet tourists’ needs.” It needs to be more focused on contemporary thinking of urban design and, the success of public open space addresses to meeting users’ needs. On a tourism Island, users of these spaces majorly are tourists who would like to enjoy the seashore. This study posits that tourists’ needs in public open spaces are affected by numerous factors and specifically clarifies factors of travel motivation. It also takes Kish Island in the south of Iran as the case where assumed to enhance the open spaces due to its current plans of tourism development. On this island as one of the main tourist destinations of the country, tourists are the main users of public open spaces. The methodology of this study firstly involved reviewing the comprehensive literature of two fields including tourism islands designing public open space and documenting the concepts. Then, the investigation drives an experimental study on Kish Island. It is content of a tourists’ survey in the Island and a semistructured interview with the experts who involved tourism planning or public open spaces development in there. The results of the study clarified the factor of travel motivation should be considered to meet tourists’ needs for public open space on Kish Island. It also shows the relationship between tourists’ needs in the spaces and indicates the groups of needs that are more or less affected by this factor. In the end, the study presents some suggestions for planning and designing these spaces that would certainly contribute towards improving the quality of them the Island. These final recommendations help to enhance tourism development in Kish Island as well as can be generalized for other tourism destinations with similar cultural and climatic characteristics.
Keywords: Travel Motivation, Tourists’ Needs, Public Open Space, Kish Island
2013, TURIZAM International Scientific Journal, University of Novi Sad, Serbia