The fundamental changes in broad environment underpinning tourism phenomena bring forward not only opportunities but also challenges for academic research, requiring the development of new constructs, new theories and new methods. Tourism and Hospitality Prospects invited experienced scholars to write essays on the phenomena, questions and theories in tourism studies, aimed to further academic discussion about these issues.

We should answer the following questions in order to conduct research effectively in the field of tourism management.First, what are the characteristics of tourism research? Second, what is the basis of tourism research? Third, how will high-value tourism research issues be identified and put forward? Fourth, how will scientific and applicable methods be employed to carry out research? Fifth, how will the results of tourism research be evaluated, well accepted and therefore exert some academic influence? According to the classification of disciplines by the Education Ministry of China,Tourism Research is incorporated into the category of Tourism Management, which in turn derives its fundamental theories from Management and Economics. The author of this paper has been the principal investigator of many tourism research programs and published a few award-winning monographs and papers. Based on the analysis of research of some economists and management scholars who have won the Nobel Prize in economics, this paper attempts to explore and find answers to the above-mentioned questions.

This article reflects upon issues and perspectives on China tourism and its research in the new era. The essay unfolds itself in a paradigmatic context of ontology, epistemology and methodology in conjunction with the unknown, the known and the knower for its knowledge production. Multi-/inter-disciplinary integration, generational transition of members in its scientific community, and the dynamism and interactions between/amongst its academics, industry professionals and government administrations are identified and discussed as defining features of China tourism research and practice in the new era. Hopefully, these emerging issues and perspectives offer promises for the advancement of theory and betterment of practice of China tourism in the new era.

Social media(SM) plays an important role in tourism. It shapes how travellers make decision and change their pre-travel, during travel and post-travel behaviours. SM has also influenced tourism industry practice in the areas of marketing, sales and product development. How Chinese nationals engage with SM in tourism activities is under researched. There have been statistics reporting the usage of the Internet and ICT applications by Chinese nationals. However these statistics are simply descriptive parameters, and cannot provide in-depth insight into SM adoption for tourism in China. Therefore, this study explores the use of SM in tourism-related activities in China with the aim to understand the role of SM in China’s tourism sphere.The research focused on the use of three most popular SM websites, which were RenRen, Sina Weibo and Douban, in tourism-related activities in China.The exploratory research has identified that Chinese use SM to share information about, and personal evaluation of, destinations, tourism products, itineraries of travel, visa and currency exchange. The selected SM sites provide Chinese users a space for open communication and freely exchange of ideas, emotions and cognitive insights into travel, life and being. The technology also offers them a new way of socialising with each other. Renren and Donban in particular give Chinese bloggers a space to freely externalise their deep reflection on travel, life and being in the public domain. Through this process of knowledge transformation, a discursive discourse of tourism representation and understanding is created and re-created. Therefore, SM is more than just an information communication channel. It is a creator that enables the expansion of tourism boundary and a shaper that constantly shapes tourism as a human social conduct within that boundary. The paper argues that SM should not only be regarded as information communication channels, but also a creator and a shaper to forge what tourism is in the contemporary societies.

Collecting the network attention and relevant data,using agglomeration index, diffusion index, Pearson test,regression analysis and so on, and revealing the features of convergence-diffusion’s spatial-temporal in Hunan province and its influencing factors,we can get the following conclusions:（1）The larger flow of tourism generally comes from the cities with higher level of economic development, larger population and abundant tourism resources. The Agglomeration index of cities and towns shows a trend of rising first and then decreasing.（2）Influenced by climate comfort and other factors, the agglomeration and diffusion ability of tourist flow in different seasons is different.（3）Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan area is the main tourist source area, and it is also the main tourism destination. It is important for the tourism development in Hunan province.The big western Hunan area is also the main tourism agglomeration area in Hunan province.（4）The most important factors of tourist flow Convergence-Diffusion are GDP and the abundance of tourism resources.

Professional identity significantly influences students’ professional learning and career choice. To some extent, it also influences our discipline development and major construction. However, there are few studies that directly focus on professional identity from the perspective of undergraduate tourism management students. To address the literature gap, this research explores the dimensions of professional identity and its potential impact factors by questionnaire targeting undergraduate tourism management students in China.The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) are conducted on professional identity scale to figure out the dimensions that comprise professional identity of undergraduate students in tourism management program(major). Based on the above analysis, the independent sample t-test and one-way ANOVA are analyzed to confirm the differences in professional identity for students’ personal characteristics and college characteristics. EFA and CFA reveal that the professional identity of undergraduate tourism management students comprises four dimensions, namely emotion attachment, professional teaching, professional learning, and social approval. Moreover, undergraduate tourism management students have a low degree of professional identity. To be specific, students perceive relatively higher identity on emotion attachment and professional teaching, but their perceptions of professional learning and social approval are lower.In addition, the grade, enrollment methods, and school & department perform significant differences at all dimensions of professional identity, while other personal characteristics and college characteristics are significantly different at one to three dimensions.

Despite not being a typical energy-consuming sector, the tourism industry has attracted ever-increasing attention in recent years, due to its steadily increasing levels of energy consumption. This phenomenon has generated numerous studies of tourism-related energy consumption. Compared with the international academic community, the researches of Chinese tourism energy consumption have just stated. Taking this into account, this study carries a research review of international tourism related energy consumption through a bibliometric analysis based on Web of Science. For one thing, our results will bring domestic academia a more comprehensive understanding of the academic front in this field. For another, our results can have a certain reference value to guide any relevant, and subsequent studies. Particularly, The paper also makes prospects on the research of energy consumption in China’s tourism industry. Our results indicate that the most important subject involved with tourism related energy consumption is Environmental sciences ecology. Our results also clearly show that four aspects are mostly focused on, including the relationship between energy, environment and tourism development, reducing energy consumption in tourism industry, the composition and measurement of tourism related energy consumption, and the application of new energy in the development of tourism industry. Despite those significant findings, some improvements should also be addressed in future work, such as the countermeasures of energy consumption reduction and their impacts, the comparison of different energy consumption in different tourism sectors as well as the relationship between energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. Regarding Chinese research on tourism related energy consumption, besides those aspects indicated above, the measurement of tourism related energy consumption, the impact of energy consumption on the sustainable development of China’s tourism, and the relationship between energy consumption and stakeholders’ literacy deserve more efforts.

Textbooks in higher education need to focus on three major aspects: fundamental theories and concepts, industry practices and applications, and pedagogy (the art and science of teaching). Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism（7th Ed.）, authored by Kotler, Bowen, Makens and Baloglu, provides a comprehensive introduction to marketing concepts, applications and management in hospitality and tourism, and is used as a marketing textbook for junior and senior undergraduate students in universities/colleges.