Examining Standard Airport Infrastructure for Simulation: The Case Study of Dubai and Imam Khomeini Airports

The main purpose of the present study is to compare and adapt Dubai and Imam Khomeini airports in order to meet the latter’s standards according to international standards, and then review and identify the function of a modern airport in attracting tourists. Therefore, the present study is applied in terms of objectives, descriptive-analytic in terms of the nature and type, and qualitative in terms of data collection. The population included transportation and tourism experts including university professors, tourism graduates, officials and other senior experts and managers at the airline organization as well as tourism investors and activists. Due to the limited size of the population, 60 experts were selected and presented as the sample using Cochran's formula. In this study, the researcher prepared a questionnaire for conducting the interview. However, the order of the questions could be changed depending on the interview process, and the interviewer could present other questions, or investigate the interviewees’ responses, according to the interviewees' responses in addition to the questions presented as guidelines. The semi-structured interview has several types among which the expert interview was used in the present study. In this type of interview, the interviewee participates in the study on account of their expertise in a specific field of activity and as a representative of an expert group. In the present study, the researcher used the strategy of control by the members in order to raise the validity of the interviews. In addition, the researcher did not just ask a question to understand the intended phenomenon, but used a few questions to examine various aspects of the phenomenon in order to gain a high level of understanding, and this contributed to the validity of the interviews. In addition, in the present study, the data was obtained from other sources to control the accuracy of the data from the interview. To achieve reliability, interpreting and analyzing the findings from the interviews were performed in a structured process (i.e., systematic coding, detailed description of which is given in the following pages). Therefore, others can review the details of how data was collected, how decisions were made, and how interpretations and analyses were conducted in the interview. With regard to the questions posed, in general, this research supported the conceptual model using the survey method (Delphi).