Tidal tourism flow study: Conceptual framework and research ideas

Abstract

Tourism flow is an important tourism phenomenon, and it is also one of the core problems in tourism geography research. At present, the overall research situation is characterized by multiple scales, multiple cases and themes, and equal emphasis on big data and refinement. However, most of the existing studies are based on innovations in technical methods or case topics, which mistakenly regard tourism flow as the ultimate scientific problem and research goal. Therefore, the basic theoretical research of tourism flow needs to be re-recognized, strengthened, and enriched. The “Golden Week” holiday tourism flow is a special short-term high-intensity tourism flow restricted by time, space, information, and other conditions. When the concentration of vacation time promotes the tourist flow in some scenic spots to a certain extent, it will inevitably lead to excessive tourism. How to correctly deal with and effectively alleviate the blowout effect caused by the Golden Week and promote the sustained, healthy, and standardized development of holiday tourism still needs further in-depth discussion. Based on the tidal fluctuation, advancing, and retreating phenomenon of holiday tourism flow in attractive scenic spots with well-known brand and resource endowment advantage as core competitiveness, this study deduced the tidal movement theory of tourism flow by comparing with the tidal phenomenon of oceans. A systematic framework of tidal tourism flow research was constructed from the aspects of flow characteristics, spatial process, system dynamics, scale effect, energy characteristics, and digital simulation. The research refined the complicated phenomenon of holiday tourism flow into a simplified theoretical explanation, broke through the bottleneck of traditional tourism seasonality research, and may enrich the basic theory of China's tourism flow research and provide an important practical reference for guiding the practice of Golden Week holiday tourism flow management in scenic spots.