Travel and tourism industry, the world’s leading industrial contributor, represents the largest percentage of world gross domestic product, taking into account direct, indirect and induced impacts, which is about 9 percent of world gross domestic product, or US$6.3 trillion in GPD, and employment opportunities in 2011, which is 1 in 12 jobs, or 255 million jobs, according to WTTC.
In response to the rate of growth of tourism demands a process of special displacement of tourists to new destinations has been set in motion. The new management and planning paradigms are emerging; therefore, available natural and cultural heritage resources have the potential to be developed into tourists’ attractions.
Literature, as a type of cultural tourism, offers a wide variety of tourists’ attractions since it deals with “places and events from fictional texts as well as the lives of their author.” High demands for literary tourism, dealing with culture, make planners to be more involved in literary destinations planning and management.
Historical sites and cultural heritage Iran identified with is a step toward developing cultural and literary tourism, the growth of world demand of which has made the managers think about the potentials which can be a focus of interest for large numbers of tourists, the potentials highly revered poets like Ferdowsi, Nasser Khosraw, Khayyam, Sa’di and Hafiz and notable modern ones like Sohrab Sepehri, Parvin E’tesami, Shahriar, Nima Youshij and so on create.
The idea behind the conference of literary tourism is to be familiarized with demands and available potentials besides providing facilities and services in development of literary tourism in Iran, which may become a step toward future economic growth and Iran intangible cultural heritage development.

Ismaeel Ghaderi (PHD)
Conference scientific convener