The typology of geotourists with the aim of optimizing tourism management in geosites

Introduction Along with geotourism,the scientific community is still in search of answers suitable for the purpose, why travel to the geotouristic areas, interests and motivations, needs and desires and demographic characteristics of geotourists. On the other hand, there are different interpretations and the plurality of opinions in this regard, some confusion in the literature is provided. Materials and Methods This article attempts to analyze and the expression of a range of dimensions and characteristics of a geotourist and collecting and providing comments and suggestions in the literature, Certain information from geotourists for researchers and practitioners in the field provided. The research method is descriptive content analysis. During this study, the position and status of theoretical foundations of geotourists have been described in terms of the nature and scope of geotourism. Discussion and Results Everyone, as the executive or audience of geotourism, is obligated to observe all its principles and dimensions. Minimizing the consequences, negating environmental and cultural awareness, creating positive experiences for visitors and hosts, attracting direct financial support for safeguards measures, creating financial rewards and empowering local peoples, enhancing the political, environmental, and social environment of host societies, supporting Citizenship rights are the most important of these principles. On the other hand, one of the goals of geotourism is to teach geosciences. Given the challenge, designing tools and providing solutions that can combine these two, namely, leisure and training, is necessary. Attention to the typology of geotourists leads to a better understanding of the dimensions of geotourism and contributes to the development and marketing of geotourism. It also provides some insight into the choice of tourism destination and the creation of a competitive atmosphere for these purposes. The experience of successful geotourism depends on the needs of the tourist and, in this case, it is more probable to re-visit geosite. Having a set of phenomena and tourist attractions with geological, geomorphologic, biological, heritage and cultural features is one of the most important features of each geotourist site. Therefore, offering a diverse set of attractions that is known in the literature of geotourism as "ABC[1]", and covers non-polluting phenomena (geological and geomorphological), living (animals and plants), and cultural (artificial attraction), from geotours side is necessary for geotourists. The development of geotourism should not affect the conservation of geotourist sites. Therefore, developers and land managers must, in any way, establish a balance between the conservation and development of geotourism. In the meantime, creation of geotourist training ground is one of the important tasks of geoscientists working in the field of geotourism. Undoubtedly, it is necessary to use simple and adaptive instruments for the geotourists to explain and teach geology and geomorphology for geotourists. This paper attempts to present an image of geotourists and their characteristics by reviewing resources and collecting globally written documents. The increasing trend of interest in visiting geotourist sites, increasing geological and geomorphologic information, visiting diverse cultures, enjoying outdoor activities, and settling in simple residences, in spite of the persuasion of tourists to geotourism, led the geotourists to take individual trips to instead of participating in the tour group. Perhaps because of this, the lack of such tours in Iran and even the world, or if they exist, will not meet the needs and aspirations of geotourists. Conclusions The results showed that the real geotourist is one who in order to geotourism purposes and proportionate to the nature and scope of it, protect and support the five key aspects of the geographical features of the area, the environment, culture, aesthetics, science and education and well-being of local people. This paper tries to provide researchers and practitioners with a geotourism perspective with comprehensive analysis of the dimensions and characteristics of a geotourist and the collection and presentation of ideas and suggestions in the subject literature. [1]-‘ABC’ attractions including Abiotic (non-living features such as geological attractions), biotic features (including fauna and flora) and Cultural (including built attractions).