| Author: | Ma, Yao |
| Title: | A historical geography of tourism development in Luoyang |
| Advisors: | Xiao, Honggen (SHTM) Kim, Sam (SHTM) |
| Degree: | DHTM |
| Year: | 2023 |
| Subject: | Tourism -- China Tourism -- China -- Luoyang (Henan) -- History Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | xi, 207 pages : color illustrations, map |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | A tourist destination cannot be fully understood without analyzing its origin and evolutionary history. Studying tourism history helps form a temporal perspective on tourism development. Outstanding academic outcomes of tourism history have been reported mainly in western countries. Thus, expanding tourism history research in different contexts would be meaningful. Unlike tourism in western countries, China’s modern tourism is dominated by the government, prioritizes inbound tourism, and began developing rapidly in the late 1970s. Famous Historical and Cultural Cities (FHCCs) in China have become the main urban tourist destinations that attract a large number of tourists having an interest in the heritage, art, culture, and history. Luoyang is one of the cities with “FHCC” title and one of the most Outstanding Tourist Cities in China. Thus, it is meaningful to summarize Luoyang’s tourism experience and give reference for other FHCCs and future development. However, modern tourism history concerning FHCCs in China has not been given much attention. This study intends to fill this gap by taking Luoyang as the research object combined with modern tourism evolutionary analysis through historical geography analysis. This study involves both qualitative historical research and field research as the primary method and supplementary method, respectively. Data were collected from newspapers, travel journals and diaries, yearbooks, chronicles, guidebooks, brochures, academic papers, books, government documents, and electronic archives. Oral history was achieved through in-depth interviews with key-informants from government tourism-related offices, academic organizations, and the tourism-related industries. The informants were selected through purposeful sampling method and snowball method, respectively. A guideline was prepared before each interview. According to the demand, field research method was used to check and fulfill the archived data. Finally, the qualitative content analysis and quantitative descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. GIS and photoshop software were used to analyze photographic images. Based on the analysis of the geographical changes in tourist attractions, accommodation, catering, traffic, shopping, and entertainment, as well as the market source and tourists’ motivation and behavior, this study finds that the tourism development process during the period of 1982-2020 can be divided into two stages. These tourism development stages are consistent with Ashworth and Tunbridge’s tourist-historic city model. From 1982 to 2000, a new business center developed in the city that neighbored the old city. The attractions expanded from the urban areas to sub-counties. However, the main tourism activities occurred in the suburbs instead of the old city because the existing large-scale heritage sites are in suburbs. The accommodation, catering, shopping, and entertainment activities were concentrated in commercial areas with advanced facilities and excellent traffic. From 2000 to 2020, the tourism development process entered the third stage of Ashworth and Tunbridge’s model. A new commercial center developed that replaced the original center. Modern leisure attractions equipped with advanced facilities developed in the new districts. Moreover, heritage tourism developed based on the heritage ruins in the old city. Tourist accommodation and catering sectors expanded in the same direction as the tourist attractions. A tourist-historic city appeared in the area overlapping the new commercial area, original center, and old city. Unlike the model, in Luoyang, tourism development was not started in old city because of the immense workload and long construction period in this area. Therefore, cultural tourism was developed based on the existing heritages in suburbs and sub-counties in the early stage. After 2000, driven by the rapid development pace of city pattern and tourism industry, the formation of a tourist-historic city in urban areas and the expansion of tourism to the new areas and sub-counties occurred simultaneously. Theoretically, this multi-disciplinary study comprises the studies of tourism history, historical geography, and tourism geography. It enriches the spatial dimension of tourism history and expands the temporal dimension of tourism geography. Moreover, the research findings enrich the scientific knowledge of FHCCs’ tourism from the historical perspective. Studying the modern tourism evolution in China enriches the tourism development model in a different context. Practically, this research provides a useful reference for the tourism development in Luoyang and implications for tourism development in FHCCs. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7308.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 4.22 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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