TY - JOUR AB - Purpose Considering that the historic city of Yazd was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and given the necessity of improving the environmental qualities due to the increased number of domestic and foreign tourists, the concept of acoustic comfort seems to be of considerable importance. In this regard, the purpose of this paper is to identify and evaluate the role of sound space components affecting acoustic comfort in the historic urban spaces of the City of Yazd and its two historic squares named Khan Square and Fahadan Square.Design/methodology/approach Accordingly, a total of 632 foreign tourists visiting these squares were asked to enumerate different sounds they could hear in the square and identify their relation with acoustic comfort. In terms of the objectives, this is an applied research using survey and correlation methods. In addition, ANOVA and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data.Findings The results of this study indicated that motorcycle and automobile noises were considered as the most important sounds disturbing the acoustic comfort, and sounds of children’s play, water, talking and businesses were the most important factors promoting the acoustic comfort in the historic squares.Originality/value The paper highlights the soundscape and acoustic conditions that affect the tourisms in the traditional and tourism square in historical context of Yazd city. VL - 5 IS - 3 SN - 2056-5607 DO - 10.1108/IJTC-08-2018-0065 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/IJTC-08-2018-0065 AU - Montazerolhodjah Mahdi AU - Sharifnejad Mojtaba AU - Montazerolhodjah MohammadReza PY - 2019 Y1 - 2019/01/01 TI - Soundscape preferences of tourists in historical urban open spaces T2 - International Journal of Tourism Cities PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 465 EP - 481 Y2 - 2024/03/28 ER -