The Ceremony of Tasua and Ashura as a Tourism Attractions in Iran (Case Study: Taft City)

Today, tourism as a global and social phenomenon has special implication of its own. The mechanism behind the phenomenon intertwines and takes different forms in different times and places and completely different effects on the human beings (de freitas, 2003:47). There are many types of tourism. One of the most important tourism forms is religious tourism. Religious tourism is a combination of travel and religion. Most writers are taking into account religious tourism as a part of cultural tourism. Of course, both are quite different, but these two are tied together, and religion is a part of culture. Religious Cultural Festival is an event that causes tourism to travel to a foreign country for looking for religion and heritage experience. Hence the Muharram ceremonies (Ashura and Tasua) as a religious event can be raised as an event that can familiarize domestic and foreign tourists with part of Iranian religious and culture society. Iran is an old and historical country and its present religious is Islam, most of the people are Shia? The ceremonies of Tasua and Ashura in most part of this country with different showings are done. One of those is in Taft city located in Yazd province. This research is with aims to optimize utilization of the Ashura and Tasua religious festival in order to develop Taft city and to remove barriers on the way of Taft religious tourism using the SWOT model. This evaluation model (that evaluated strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) is considered one of the best strategies for tourism planning. Methods of data collection and analysis of required data is more documentaries, analytical and Survey research. The results indicate that proximity to population centers and urban centers, such as the city of Yazd and distinctive funeral\u27s style from other parts of Province, are the best strengths for this city\u27s religious tourism. Short duration of tourists stay in the cities and Lack of tourists\u27 economic outputs in the city are the weaknesses. Finally, considering to strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities were presented competitive - aggressive, variation, revision and defensive strategies