Abstract

As an economic sector, the tourism industry is growing rapidly. There is an intense competition among tourist destinations to attract more tourists. This paper aims at finding the most important factors for attracting foreign tourists. The population consisted of the OECD member countries and the Group of 77. In total, 32 countries from among OECD countries and 73 countries from among G77 countries were selected and a case of 105 countries was obtained. The study period was considered equal to 14 years from 1995 to 2008. After forming a matrix of data, the analysis was done using variables correlations and Minitab statistical software. Also, this software was used to Principal Component Analysis (PCA) in world tourism industry. The results showed that in addition to the country's infrastructure facilities, the natural and historical – religious potentials are the most important factors in attracting foreign tourists. The country’s political and economic conditions rank the next factors. Moreover, based on data from two groups, the results of PCA categorized the tourism indicators in two kinds of indicators. This categorization indicated that OECD countries own the biggest part of world tourism benefits. On the other hand, G77 countries have the most growth in tourism indicators.