China Tourism

Examine China's impact on the world tourism market! Tourism in China is a comprehensive study of tourism and the travel industry in China--past, present, and future. Since joining many of its Asia-Pacific neighbors in identifying tourism as a vehicle for socioeconomic growth and poverty alleviation, China has become the leader in the Asian travel industry, surpassing all forecasts with high and constant growth in international and domestic tourism activity. In fact, the World Trade Organization predicts that by 2020, China will become the world's leading tourism destination, receiving 145 million visitors. This timely book examines the diverse opportunities and challenges the country's tourism industry faces in meeting those projections. A unique, interdisciplinary guide that appeals to practitioners and academics, Tourism in China has been called “probably the most in-depth analysis of China's tourism industry” by the World Trade Organization's Dr. Harsh Varma. The book presents a collection of articles--scholarly in nature, comprehensive in scope--that serves as a significant (and much-needed) reference on Chinese tourism, though not including minority or border tourism, or the Hong Kong or Taiwan markets. The industry's historical development, its impact on the Chinese economy and ecology, and its current and future markets are examined extensively. Tourism in China also examines: the impressions of Western travelers in China during the 19th century the tourism boom and its development since 1978 the development of ecotourism in China's nature reserves the effect of the tourism boom on the hotel industry the development of theme parks in China. With two-thirds of China's provincial governments committed to making tourism one of their pillar industries, it is essential that tourism professionals, academics, and students around the world have a thorough understanding of this leader in current and future world travel. Tourism in China provides a detailed look at how the country’s tourism industry was built and how it will continue to expand. Helpful tables and figures, as well as a glossary of relevant terms, make the information easy to access and understand.

China is forecast to be the primary tourist destination and tourist-generating country by 2020. However, much of the writing on tourism in China has come from people within the English academic world who are not involved in the issues related to Chinese tourism development. This book provides a voice to Chinese mainland academic researchers and examines the nature of tourism research and tourism development in China. Contributors, many of whom are based in China and are immersed in the daily issues of teaching, researching and planning tourism development within China, discuss issues related to resource use, destination image and community participation with case studies that combine conceptual frameworks and practical issues. This authoritative text on tourism in China will be of interest to scholars and students of tourism throughout the world.

This edited volume explores various issues in family tourism studies and complements the dramatic development of this market segment in China. The book concentrates on family and children tourism, and through its chapters, hopes to enrich the landscape of family tourism in academia. The family market in tourism has received increasing attention over past decades. Yet academic endeavors in this area remain somewhat lacking in depth and scope. In addition to imbalanced contributions from authors of diverse backgrounds, the extant literature suffers from insufficient inclusion of children. Relevant studies are largely limited to conventional tourism destinations such as beaches and cultural attractions. In response to growing academic interest in family tourism, this book is a compilation of eight chapters that attempt to push the scope and boundaries of existing research on family tourism. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of China Tourism Research.

The growth of the Chinese economy and the emergence of the Chinese middle class have fuelled the rapid expansion of China’s outbound tourism market, with many destinations around the world trying to capitalise on the opportunities created by the growing number of Chinese visitors. This book specifically focuses on the demand for food and wine tourism experiences by Chinese tourists, which in recent years has become an important constituent of destination competitiveness. Looking at the different ways in which individual destinations have responded to this increasing demand, this book provides a better understanding of the preferences, motivations and perceptions that underlie food and wine consumption by Chinese tourists. It also illustrates how food and wine tourism experiences have been used in a range of international destinations to specifically attract visitors from China. Including a range of case examples from the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, this book ultimately investigates the strategic directions adopted to guide destination development and marketing initiatives. Such a perspective provides a novel contribution to the still limited body of knowledge on China outbound tourism and will be of interest to upper level students, researchers and academics in Tourism and Hospitality.

While the number of domestic leisure travelers has increased dramatically in reform-era China, the persistent gap between urban and rural living standards attests to ongoing social, economic, and political inequalities. The state has widely touted tourism for its potential to bring wealth and modernity to rural ethnic minority communities, but the policies underlying the development of tourism obscure some complicated realities. In tourism, after all, one person’s leisure is another person’s labor. A Landscape of Travel investigates the contested meanings and unintended consequences of tourism for those people whose lives and livelihoods are most at stake in China’s rural ethnic tourism industry: the residents of village destinations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Ping’an (a Zhuang village in Guangxi) and Upper Jidao (a Miao village in Guizhou), Jenny Chio analyzes the myriad challenges and possibilities confronted by villagers who are called upon to do the work of tourism. She addresses the shifting significance of migration and rural mobility, the visual politics of tourist photography, and the effects of touristic desires for “exotic difference” on village social relations. In this way, Chio illuminates the contemporary regimes of labor and leisure and the changing imagination of what it means to be rural, ethnic, and modern in China today.

This is the first book to set the development of tourism in China since 1949 in its policy context. Underpinned by a strong conceptual framework, this systematic study of China contributes to an in-depth understanding of how public policy-making for tourism works and how it affects the development of tourism in the real world. The text explores tourism policy during three distinct leadership periods since creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The attitudes and values of leaders and central government agencies towards tourism are considered, as well as the interactions of ideological orthodoxies, socioeconomic conditions and institutions in their influence on national policy-making and tourism development. A separate chapter is devoted to policy-making in Hong Kong and Macau, as well as Taiwan. Drawing on China’s experience over 60 years the book concludes with both theoretical and practical implications for tourism policy-making.

This book offers a comprehensive understanding of China’s tourism development from 1992 onwards, focusing on the social-cultural change that accompanied the rise of tourism. It examines both the economic benefits and sociocultural impacts of tourism and argues that tourism sustainability depends on a delicate balance between economic and social-cultural interests which could manifest differently among the stakeholders of various interests. It also explores, through both theoretical and empirical analysis, how travel connects people and places through the processes of tourist imagination and consumption. The volume portrays how contemporary discourses fuse with individual histories to formulate the ways in which tourists understand China. It will be a useful resource for students and scholars in human geography, tourism management, leisure and recreation, and social sciences.

This book offers an in-depth understanding of tourism development and destination planning in China's transitional economy. It represents an international collaboration between researchers both in and outside China and provides a unique platform for a broad international audience to better understand China and China tourism issues.