Page 9 - World Heritage and Tourism Innovation

Exploring the Sustainability in a Rural Area

of the World Heritage City of Yazd During

the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Example
of a Survived Eco-lodge’s Innovations

Mohammadhossein Dehghan Pour Farashah,
University of Lodz, Poland,
mohammadhossein.dehghan.pour.farashah@edu.uni.lodz.pl
Ehsan Aslani
Islamic Azad University, Iran,
ehsan_aslani88@yahoo.com

Alimohammad Ansarisadrabadi,
Islamic Azad University, Iran
alimohamad_ansari@yahoo.com

This paper aimed to assess a surviving eco-lodge with private ownership in Yazd
Province, Iran, from a sustainability perspective. After unexpected circumstanc-
es caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the eco-lodge has adopted innovations that
could apply to similar cases. For data collection, the eco-lodge owner contributed to
researchers by providing necessary information regarding his activities. Moreover, a
semi-structured interview with the owner was conducted. The studied eco-lodge is
an old mansion on the outskirts of the Historic City of Yazd, the first inscribed city
of Iran on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. At first, this old mansion was adaptively
reused for accommodation purposes to familiarise tourists with the local lifestyle in
2016. Traditional architecture techniques, materials, and minimum intervention on
the layout have been implemented in the adaption process. This eco-lodge has pre-
pared financial support for locals by hiring women and youth. On the other hand,
it has introduced rural areas as a prominent destination. According to the findings,
a set of innovations in line with sustainability principles, such as collaborating with
local entrepreneurship, advertising the sale of local handicraft products on its social
media, holding creative events for children, and cooperating with universities and
NGOs, helped the eco-lodge to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keywords: sustainability, eco-lodge, COVID-19, innovation, Historic City of Yazd,
Iran
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-417-0.5-15

Introduction tourism industry was especially affected as one of the
With the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first sectors with travel restrictions in almost all coun-
world faced an unexpected and unprecedented global tries worldwide (World Tourism Organization, 2020).
health, social and economic emergency. The travel and However, eco-tourism had a small share of the global

Proceedings of the 7th UNESCO UNITWIN Conference | 5