Determining the factors affecting the selection of wedding location: Sample of Hatay

Today's ever-changing tourist needs and expectations have led to countries that want to compete in the international tourism market by diversifying their tourism activities. Touristic product diversification allows visitors to have a better holiday experience, stay longer and spend more. For the countries that want to diversify touristic products, wedding tourism which is a kind of tourism that attracts attention in recent years, is a type of tourism which includes all travels directly or indirectly related to wedding and weddings. The aim of the study is to determine the criteria affecting the selection of wedding place in Hatay, which is chosen as the application area. Within the scope of this aim, it is possible to provide transportation by air, sea and land, as a door opening to the Middle East, rich cultural structure, the Arab population is very intense because of the marriage of Arab countries, the suitability of climatic conditions, etc. Hatay was chosen as the area of application for reasons. The scale which was developed for use in research, consists of marketing efforts, economic criteria, social criteria, psychological criteria and cultural criteria. The data obtained from 385 questionnaires were analyzed by means of SPSS 24.0 analysis program and findings were obtained. As a result of the study, it was found that the variables such as gender, age, income level, marital status, education level, place of residence, the person or persons that they went to the interview together create differences on the perceptions of the criteria affecting the choice of wedding place.