Measuring the Level of Satisfaction with Respect to the Quality of Services Provided by the Local Tourist Destination in Mashhad, Iran

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of satisfaction level of tourists in Mashhad through an analytical method. The main purpose of the research is to assess the level of socio-cultural and environmental conditions and the tourist ser-vices facilities of Mashhad. Systematization literary sources and approaches for solving the problem of tourism development indicates that the tourism economy in Mashhad has special stability in terms of economic factors. Field studies were conducted during the period between April and June 2014 in the form of a questionnaire. For investigation of the topic, a total of 335 internal tourists in Mashhad were selected. For analyzing data and explaining the subject of the study, Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, Spearman, Chi-Square, and one-sample t-tests were used to understand the relationship be-tween tourist experience and socio-cultural as well as environmental conditions and infrastructure facilities respectively. The paper presents the results of an empirical analysis indicated that the tourists were largely satisfied with the socio-cultural and environmental conditions as well as existing infra-structure facilities. Accordingly, no significant (P-value<0.13) difference between men and women tourist population were shown. Meanwhile, the tourists with different levels of education had the same views on the consent for all parameters (Kruskal-Wallis test – 4.035 P-value<0.13) of the tour-ists. The research empirically confirms and theoretically proves that no significant correlation between the length of residence and the level of satisfaction with tourism conditions (r=0/113, P-value<0.038), host society interactions (x2 = 106/107, P-value<0.000) and significant differences between attitudes of men and women (Mann-Whitney = 3753/5, P-value<0.000). Also, tourists with different educa-tional levels had different views considering how to deal with the host community (Kruskal-Wallis test 10.754; P-value<0.005). The results of the research can be useful for sustainable development of the tourism industry and tourism management.