Developing an Innovative Business Model for Tourism Industry with an Emphasis on Creating Value in Tourist Destination: A Case Study of Mashhad City, Iran

As one of the most important industries worldwide, the tourism industry has led to the rapid growth of economic development, preparing the grounds for the development of new businesses, which has proved very effective in expanding job opportunities for different walks of life. Therefore, this exploratory study sought to develop an innovative business model for the tourism industry with an emphasis on creating value in the destination using a grounded theory method. The required data were collected through library studies and semi-structured interviews. To this end, open and in-depth interviews were made with 16 experts until the theoretical saturation was reached. The participants comprised experts of the tourism industry, university professors, hotel managers, guides of travel agencies and tours, heads, and officials of tourism industry departments, and tourists, who were selected via purposive sampling. The collected data were thematically analyzed according to open, axial, and selective coding. Finally, the conceptual model of the study was developed based on the Strauss and Corbin model, indicating that the core principle underlying the development of diverse advantage-oriented businesses is derived from casual conditions and influenced by contextual factors. It was also found that the core principle could be identified based on some strategies. Moreover, the intervening factors were extracted from the textual data collected from the interviewees by identifying the categories that indicate environmental conditions.