Post-rurality is a core feature of rural tourism, and a correct understanding of the transformation of rural character in a post-modern context depends on whether rural tourism can realize high-quality development. Based on the concepts of rurality and post-rurality, this study constructs a post-rurality evaluation index system (post-rurality index). It considers Shuangquan Village, Huanghuagou Village, and Yulin Village as case studies. The entropy weighting method was used to calculate the weights of the dimensions and indicators to validate the post-rurality index. The study found that: (1) The index system of post rurality includes 6 dimensions, such as “new immigrants” and “re-localization” of villages, as well as 19 indexes, including floating population, tourism employment, tourists’ satisfaction, etc. (2) The calculation results show that each dimension has a different degree of influence on the post-rurality index, among which the “re-localization” of villages has the greatest influence on the post-rurality index of rural tourism, followed by the three dimensions of residence to habitat, community participation to community creation, and cultural urbanization; the latter has the least influence on the index. (3) From the calculation results of the post-rurality index of the three case sites, Shuangquan Village has the strongest post-rurality, followed by Huanghuagou Village; Yulin Village has the weakest. The construction of a post-ruralism index is of great theoretical and practical significance for measuring the degree of rural tourism development.

The rapid development of rural homestays in China’s post-modernization economic and social transformation has become an important starting point for promoting rural revitalization and urban-rural integration. Its development prospects are broad, but there are problems such as investment generalization and over-commercialization at this stage, and scientific guidance is urgently required to achieve high-quality development. By clarifying the supply and demand characteristics of rural homestays in China, this study explores the main path to guide rural homestays to achieve high-quality development from two perspectives of “single homestay production and operation-destination response after homestay gathering.” It is suggested that rural homestays should adhere to the suitability choice of production scale, the multi-dimensional “rural” choice of characteristic production, the life choice of management service, the “standardization”choice of “non-standard” production, and the sharing choice of community element after the development of industrial agglomeration. Simultaneously, it is necessary to explore the construction of a “four-level and five-dimension” social effect evaluation system for the high-quality development of rural homestays, including the improvement of human capital quality, the resilience of the social ecosystem, the realization of community common prosperity, the construction of new social cooperation networks, and the stimulation of community belonging, to expand and refine the “human-land-industry-governance” logical framework. This study has guiding value for realizing multiple social benefits, such as harmonious coexistence and coordinated development of the homestay industry and rural tourism community.

In the era of “traffic is king,” place-making through social media has become a key approach for constructing destination images and widely disseminating the significance of places. They also influence tourists’ embodied practices and emotional experiences. To explore tourists’ emotional experiences in the context of social media place-making, this study considered the popular city of Zibo as a typical case. Using the grounded theory methodology, this study reveals the mechanism behind the generation of tourists’ emotional experiences in the context of social media place-making. These findings indicate that social media place-making is the process of constructing a distinctive place identity using social media platforms. The media catalyzes tourists’ emotional experiences through the process of “media gaze-media pilgrimage-emotional response.” Through “media gaze,” tourists receive place images shaped by other stakeholders and engage in discussions on social media, which guides their imagination and expectations of the destination, thereby stimulating their motivation for media pilgrimage. Onsite, tourists perceive the physical and humanistic spaces of a destination based on media-constructed symbols and their own experiences, reinforcing the interpretation of local meanings and strengthening their connections with the destination. Through this interactive process, tourists enhance their engagement and understanding of a place, thereby elevating their physical and emotional connections with the destination. This study highlights the significant role of social media in place-making, providing a typical case for constructing and inheriting local meanings in popular social media-driven tourist destinations. This study also deepens the theoretical exploration of tourist experiences at popular destinations shaped by social media.

In recent years, the concept of tourism-embodied experiences has become a prominent area in the field of tourism research. However, there is a paucity of investigations into the phenomenon of tourism-embodied experiences in the context of sporting events. Tourism experiences associated with sports events exhibit comprehensive attributes of both sports and event tourism. However, the specific characteristics and composition of this experience remain unclear. This study approaches the Guangzhou Marathon as a case study to investigate the tourism experience of participants in participatory sports events from an embodied perspective. It employs a combination of textual materials, including interviews, online social media data, diaries, and other textual materials, to adopt thematic analysis coding and combine it with IPA analysis. This approach was used to explore the characteristics and internal factors of embodied experiences during participatory sporting events. The findings revealed that the tourism-embodied experience in participatory sports events adheres to the mechanism framework of “participants’ body-event context-atmosphere interaction”. The degree of embodied participation in the event exhibited a trajectory from low to high and subsequently declined. Embodied experiences, emotional experiences, urban space cognition, and event feedback constitute tourists’ embodied experiences. In the actual perception process of tourists, event perception and positive emotions were rated highly, whereas negative problems arising from the embodied experience highlighted areas for future improvement. This study contributes to the expansion of the tourism experience. Sports event organizers should create a favorable event context for participants, develop attractive and competitive events, and promote the active participation of tourists.

Tourism is booming with rapid economic development and the continuous pursuit of spiritual fulfillment. All-for-one tourism is currently a popular research topic in the tourism industry and is the core driving force of local economic development. This study used the CiteSpace software to visualize the number of publications, research authors, research institutions, journal sources, and research hotspots of China’s all-for-one tourism research from 2011 to 2024 to predict the future trends of China’s all-for-one tourism research. The results show that: ① Over the past 14 years, China’s research on all-for-one tourism has experienced three stages: slow germination, initial exploration, and vigorous growth, with increasing attention in recent years; ② China’s all-for-one tourism research hotspots are concentrated on the connotation of the analysis, the impact and effect of the development of countermeasures, etc. Although some academic progress has been achieved, the theoretical core and system still need improvement; ③ In the future, China’s all-for-one tourism research will mainly focus on rural tourism, cultural and tourism integration, and propose countermeasures for the development of all-for-one tourism from these perspectives to provide certain references and support for China’s rural revitalization and high-quality tourism development.