Evaluating the performance of tourism agencies in Esfahan city from the perspective of foreign tourists

Abstract. One of the social transformations in contemporary societies is the emergence of leisure time as one of the fundamental requirements, for making a good life dominated by technology and in this regard tourism is developed as a means of spending leisure time. In the meantime tourism agencies and offices have a major role in the evolution and development of the world tourism industry. Tourism offices are considered as one of the basic infrastructures for tourism development and their performance reflects the development of tourism and related services in each community. These kinds of travel agencies are trying to get traveling information and activities and provide whatever is needed for tourists. The most important activity of the tourism offices is estimating demands or creating positive demand relative to tourist attractions and in another way predicting people’s incentives for travel. Tourism offices play the role of facilitator in the service distribution channel of tourism industry. This study is aimed at evaluating the performance of tourism offices of Esfahan city from the perspective of foreign tourists; in order to study the strengths and weaknesses of the offices according to foreign tourists’ ideas, and also to give strategies to improve the quality and quantity of the services they provide and thereby take effective steps to improve services and meet the needs of foreign tourists and provide the growth and further development of the country's tourism industry. The methods of this research is descriptive-analytical that in this regard, in addition to library research and field survey, questionnaires were distributed among foreign tourists visiting historic and cultural sites and attractions of the city to collect the necessary information, and data were analyzed using Excel and SPSS software and map out action. The results of the research suggests that just the existence of numerous tourism offices cannot be a factor that to attract foreign tourists and development of the tourism in the country, but there are other effective factors that considering them can meet the demands and needs of foreign tourists favorably and in addition to develop the tourism industry, provide economic development for the country.