Mona Erfanian Salim, Ali Afshar
In regarding to sustainable tourism principles, a tourism island is assumed to provide tourists’ need in different aspects. Thus, among the shorelines of the Island, public open spaces where contain a lot of tourists should meet tourists’ needs. It needs to be more focused as contemporary thinking of urban design, and the success of public open space addresses meeting users’ needs. 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. The methodology of this study first involved reviewing the comprehensive literature of two fields including tourism islands and designing public open spaces. Then, the investigation drives an experimental study in Kish Island. It is the content of tourist’s survey in the Island and a semi-structured interview with the experts who involved tourism planning or public open spaces developing in there. The results of the study clarified the factor of travel motivation should be considered to meet tourists’ needs for public open space in the 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. At the end, the study presents some suggestions for planning and designing these spaces that would certainly contribute towards improving the quality of them in the Island and other tourism destination with similar cultural and climatic characters.
Keywords: Travel Motivation, Tourists’ Needs, Urban Open Pubic Space, Kish Island
2014, ITC’14 International Tourism Congress, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman