Orginal Article
Hongling Qi, Jisheng Liu, Lin Mei
Tourism area life cycle (TALC) is the theory to describe tourism destination evolution path, which is the most important part of tourism theory system and the most primary tool in regional tourism sustainable development planning. To further develop our existing knowledge on tourism areas evolution, some divergence and confusion on the TALC theory and its basis need to be clarified. Reviewing the domestic and international main literatures, the controversy and achievement about the basic theory are summarized elaborately. First, according to the study of the origination and development of the TALC theory of Butler and the analyzing the key concept, the article concludes that the TALC theory emphasizes the evolution of tourism region system rather than tourism product, though the theory can also be an appropriate tool for analyzing the development of tourism product. Summarizing the discussion about stages division in TALC theory, researching advantages and disadvantages of different way of stages demarcation and considering the practical value of the TALC theory, the article suggests that the evolution path of tourism region should be divided to eight stages. Which are exploration, involvement, development, consolidation, stagnation, reorientation, decline or rejuvenation, and exit stage. Beside the classical six stages in Butler TALC theory, the reorientation stage and exit stage are absolutely necessary in guiding the development of tourism area. Management decision and new investment will determine the tourism area’s evolutionary routine in reorientation stage, if the reorientation effort comes to nothing, the tourism system continues to decline, then the tourism area is doomed to enter exit stage, which means industry transformation. Experience tells us that the industry transformation is very hard for developed tourism area, very few companies want to set new branches in the decline tourism area for lacking of human resource, while a large number of people cannot find a new job after unemployed in tourism industry, there is a great possibility of big recession of whole region in exit stage. Therefore, the eight-stage TALC theory will be a more powerful tool for region development management and planning. Second, summarizing the two hot issues about TALC from 1980 to 2016, the majority literatures focus on the different characters of stages which based on specific area development data, another is the mechanism of the tourism area's evolution and four kinds of influence factors, which are macro-environment, demand, competitors and tourism area’s conditional combination. Which offers a more powerful thrust to regional tourism development planning. At last, proposing the future research prospects on TALC theory in new environment. More studies will focus on the development quality of the human-earth system in different stages instead of the shape of evolution routine of tourism area, reveal the mechanism of tourism industry decline and alternative counterplan of industry transformation in different stages, and rethink about the tourism industrial status in region economic system.