Introduction

In recent decades, urban tourism has gained significant attention as a key driver of economic, social, and cultural development in cities. However, empirical evidence shows that possessing rich historical, cultural, and physical resources does not necessarily lead to creating valuable and meaningful experiences for tourists. Many historical cities, despite their abundance of attractions, still face challenges in attracting tourists, increasing length of stay, and enhancing the quality of tourism experiences.

This issue is particularly evident in cities along the Silk Road, including Semnan. These cities, despite their rich cultural and spatial capacities, remain as transit corridors and have not transformed into distinctive tourist destinations. The root of this problem lies not so much in resource scarcity but in the inefficiency of destination management frameworks that fail to convert local assets into creative and meaningful tourism experiences.

In response to this challenge, the creative tourism approach has emerged, emphasizing the creation of distinctive experiences through interaction, participation, and co-creation. Creative tourism, by offering deep, participatory, and interactive experiences, enables closer interaction between tourists and local communities and responds to contemporary tourists' need meaningful experiences.

Tourism destination management is a key factor in coordinating planning elements, organizing, marketing, and utilizing destination resources. Within the creative tourism framework, destination management takes on a role beyond executive functions and is considered an effective mechanism for enhancing creativity and innovation and transforming local assets into tourism experiences.

The main objective of this research is to develop and test an integrated conceptual model for creative tourism destination management, conceptualizing destination management as a second-order construct consisting of four dimensions: stakeholder education and participation, creative cultural and artistic spaces, creative marketing strategies, and infrastructure and modern technologies.



Methodology

This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of method, conducted with a quantitative approach. The quantitative approach was chosen to objectively and systematically measure the relationships between variables affecting creative tourism destination management, enabling generalizability of results and providing an evidence-based model.

The statistical population of the study includes 503 stakeholders and activists in tourism and creative industries in Semnan, classified into two main groups: tourism and creative industries activists, and experts, managers, and trustees in tourism. To determine the sample size, Cochran's formula was used, estimating a sample size of 218 individuals. Stratified random sampling was employed to ensure balanced representation of each stakeholder group in the final sample. A total of 230 questionnaires were distributed in person and electronically, and after eliminating incomplete questionnaires, 218 valid questionnaires were used for final analysis.

Data collection was conducted using a survey method through a researcher-made questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed based on indicators and items extracted from reputable scientific sources and adapted to the local context of Semnan. All items were measured using a five-point Likert scale from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree."

To assess the validity of the research instrument, content validity was confirmed through consultation with university professors, tourism specialists, and creative tourism activists. Also, to measure instrument reliability, a pilot study was conducted, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated, showing values above 0.7 for all variables, confirming satisfactory questionnaire reliability.

Data analysis was performed at both descriptive and inferential levels. In the descriptive section, indicators such as mean and standard deviation were used. In the inferential section, to simultaneously test causal relationships between variables and evaluate the conceptual research model, structural equation modeling with partial least squares approach (PLS-SEM) and SmartPLS software was used. The analysis process was conducted in two main steps: measurement model evaluation (reliability and validity assessment) and structural model evaluation (hypothesis testing and predictive power).



Results and discussion

Measurement Model Evaluation: Results showed that composite reliability and Cronbach's alpha values for all constructs were above 0.7, indicating internal consistency and validity of the measurement structure. Also, all constructs with AVE values above 0.5 had appropriate convergent validity. Discriminant validity assessed by the Fornell-Larcker criterion showed that constructs had sufficient distinction.

Structural Model Evaluation: R² values for the creative tourism destination management construct were 0.964, indicating very strong explanatory power of the model. Also, Q² values for all constructs were above 0.35, indicating appropriate predictive power of the model. The overall goodness of fit index (GoF) was 0.472, which falls within the strong fit range according to interpretive criteria.

Hypothesis Testing: All research hypotheses were confirmed at the 95% confidence level. Findings showed:

- Creative marketing strategies with a path coefficient of 0.848 and t-statistic of 9.638 had the strongest impact on creative tourism destination management. Among these, emphasis on experiential marketing with a path coefficient of 0.960 was the most important component of this dimension.

- Stakeholder education and participation with a path coefficient of 0.752 and t-statistic of 6.802 had the second strongest impact. Access to and quality of educational programs with a path coefficient of 0.805 was the most important component of this dimension.

- Infrastructure and modern technologies with a path coefficient of 0.744 and t-statistic of 5.396 ranked third. Access to and integration of modern technologies with a path coefficient of 0.729 was the most important component of this dimension.

- Creative cultural and artistic spaces with a path coefficient of 0.608 and t-statistic of 4.640 had a positive and significant impact. Support for developing creative spaces with a path coefficient of 0.725 was the most important component of this dimension.

Findings indicate that creative tourism destination management in Semnan is a multidimensional and dynamic process. Creative marketing, as the strongest predictor, especially experiential marketing focusing on creating interactive and participatory experiences for tourists, plays a pivotal role. This finding aligns with research by Zhang et al. (2025), Richards (2025), and Goli et al. (2021), showing that in historical cities with high cultural potential, experiential marketing can transform hidden capacities into value perceptible to tourists through intelligent storytelling.

In the dimension of stakeholder education and participation, quality of educational programs was identified as the main driver of effective participation, consistent with findings by Berno and Bricker (2021) and Ghasemi et al. (2025).