As a concept of physics, coupling has been widely used in many fields. However, this concept is rarely used in the field of tourism. Based on the analysis of the unsustainable phenomena in tourism development, by using the methods of problem analysis and system analysis, this paper puts forward a new concept and connotation of “tourism coupling”. This article summarizes the research progress of coupling, coupling and sustainable development, and points out that tourism coupling is an important new path to solve the unsustainable problem of tourism development and it is an important evaluation model for the harmonious development of tourism. The article defines the research scope of tourism coupling and analyzes the research value of tourism coupling. Based on the case of the National Natural Science Fund for Tourism Coupling hosted by the author, this paper elaborates the practical exploration results of the coupling of tourism supply and demand from the three dimensions of the system of evaluation, the spatial and temporal evolution and the dynamic mechanism of tourism coupling.

The new era brings great opportunities to the development of rural tourism as well as new demands and challenges. Based on the observation of rural new phenomena, this study puts forward the key issues of rural tourism under the background of new era. The present paper, at first, respectively analyzes rural tourism operation mode in the digital economy from subjects’ digital poverty reduction and digital management of operation mode. Secondly, the paper explores rural tourism market development in the leisure economy from products innovation and market segmentation. Third, we discuss rural tourism entrepreneurship in the innovation economy from the entrepreneurial subject and opportunity, entrepreneurial form and effect, and entrepreneurial system and policy. Forth, we expound rural tourism poverty alleviation in the inclusive economy from the multi-dimensional poverty alleviation, comprehensive poverty alleviation area and co-construction of poverty alleviation paths. Fifth, we analyze the sustainable development of rural tourism in the green economy from the green production and green consumption. Then this paper points out that rural tourism need realize the transformation and integration of subjective and objective, the transformation and integration of resource view, and the transformation and innovation of institutional view. Finally, this paper puts forward an integrated framework of rural tourism. That is, rural tourism industry must rely on the supply and demand to promote each other, and pay attention to the supply and demand of rural tourism in the digital economy and leisure economy. The combination of supply and demand drives the innovation economy, so it is necessary to study the innovation and entrepreneurship of rural tourism. The innovation promotes the realization of poverty alleviation and sustainable development of rural tourism, and rural tourism poverty alleviation will eventually promote the overall sustainable development of rural tourism, thus we need to focus on problems of inclusive development and green development. This article is expected to promote the upgrading of rural tourism by deepening theoretical research and strengthening practice application.

Based on 1 657 papers collected from Annals of Tourism Research from 2002 to 2017 in Web of Science, this paper applies software named Citespace to analyze academic trends in tourism studies. Results show the main research topics and trends in terms of major research institutions, prominent authors, key words, citation frequency and academic contributions of scholars in mainland China. Findings show that research institutions in developed countries such as Britain, the United States and the United States ranking among the forefront in tourism studies. However, institutions and scholars from developing countries have been increasingly involved in tourism research. Medical tourism, social tourism, volunteer tourism and other new types of tourism have attracted scholar’s attention. Research topics become much more diversified, and body, emotion, wellbeing, even pets carried during travelling gradually become the focus of tourism research, which indicates that tourism research tends to focus more on an emotional and micro perspective. Researchers tend to apply multiple perspectives to analyze tourism phenomena, which gives more inspiration and insights for future researchers. Based on this, Chinese researchers are likely to conduct more dialogues with western scholars in order to establish a theoretical framework in tourism studies.

Since the concept of “all-for-one tourism” was proposed, it has rapidly become a hot word in public sphere, and has been widely discussed in the circles of education, business and politics. In recent years, the research results have increased rapidly in quantity, while the application-oriented research were in the majority, and theoretical exploration was very rare. There is lacking of deeply thought and connotation definition about the concept of “all-for-one tourism” in the academia, which leads to generalization and blur boundary of the concept in the research process, invoking confusion in industrial practice.

Exploring the origin and evolution of the concept of “all-for-one tourism”, and reviewing correlational discussions and studies in the circles of education, business and politics through rational reflection, the author proposes that people should understand the concept and its connotation from multiple perspectives and subjects in this article. As an academic concept, development ideal and action strategy, it is still in a state of flux and negotiation in different dimensions and at multiple levels, so the meaning of “all-for-one tourism” should be reflected and improved academically. Based on various analyses, this research presents a fire-new view to understand the concept of “all-for-one tourism”. As a completely new idea of development, the value goal of “all-for-one tourism” should be returned to value rationality from instrumental rationality, and we should make development of tourism become both a powerful tool for improving life quality and happiness of tourists and local residents, and an important way to realize beautiful life for people.

It is needed to adjust local conditions in implementing “all-for-one tourism”. Cities and counties whose resource condition and industrial basis are excellent, are priority development areas of “all-for-one tourism”. It will be confronted with numerous difficulties and obstacles in implementation process, and therefore the crucial problems should be solved including tourist destination construction, institutional improvement, industry upgrading and human development.

It has been one of the hotspots and difficulties in the study of regional tourism economy whether coastal tourism can promote its contribution to the development of coastal areas through the promotion of urban tourism infrastructure. Through using a variety of methods, we comprehensively assess the dependence of tourism on urban infrastructure and its spatial characteristics. The methods of entropy and grey correlation degree will be used to study the inter-city differences and correlations between tourism and tourism infrastructure in the Bohai Rim region, and spatial autocorrelation analysis will be used to demonstrate the spatial clustering characteristics of the association. The research demonstrates that: (1) The competitive landscape of tourism in Bohai Rim is that Tianjin, Dalian, and Qingdao have been proven as the regional growth poles of Tianjin, Liaoning, and Shandong respectively, which leads to the development of the tourism industry in low-level cities and shows an intensified trend; (2) The ranking of tourism infrastructure is first for Tianjin, most cities stand in the second and third tiers, but they tend to be spatially balanced under the influence of the core growth area; (3) Most of the inter-city spatial autocorrelation is not significant. There is significant spatial negative correlation between tourism and tourism infrastructure in each city, which means the degree of correlation between the two cities failed to break through the administrative boundary to form a spatial spillover effect.