Since the country’s reform and opening-up, China’s tourism discipline research has made excellent progress, including the results, direction, team and subject status within academia. However, it is urgent to rethink and further explore this emerging academic study and discipline construction. In the next stage of development, several issues need to be reconsidered, such as: 1) how to evaluate the present state of tourism research in China; 2) how to analyze the current problems in these endeavors; 3) how to understand the gap that still exists between the tourism discipline and other disciplines; and 4) how to promote the further development of China’s tourism discipline.
Firstly, this paper objectively analyzes three broad stages in the development of China’s tourism discipline research: 1) the start-up phase; 2) the gradual formation of tourism as a research field; 3) the subsequent expansion of and reflection on this area of research. Secondly, there is a careful analysis of several ongoing challenges in the research, for example, the essence of research object, the concept system, the research paradigm, the principal contradiction, influencing factors and research level. Lastly, toward the end of the paper, the prospects for future tourism discipline research are put forward.
Concurrently, the tourism industry is responding to new factors and trends. Therefore, it is clear that research in the field of tourism must also face new opportunities and challenges. It is high time for those who study in the field to adopt a long-term, scientific research practice. In the meantime, we must immediately engage in a rational discussion of exactly how the field should be constructed. Deficiencies in the academic research should be overcome with time. Of special importance is the development of local emphases in the discipline’s research. In particular, the construction of this discipline’s research paradigm is sure to become the core issue for tourism academic research in the future.

The trans-local cultural production of food is one of the most hotly debated research agendas and becomes emergingly significant in the area of food geography. Despite the long-term discussion on the paradox of authenticity versus standardization of food and the theoretical exploration on the food consumption context versus producers’ strategy, there is still a lack of interpretation from the views of food consumers, especially the fundamental value of food, namely food authenticity, food safety and food health. Given these shortcomings, this study proposed a three-dimensional framework including food authenticity, food safety and food health and based on this theoretical framework, this paper discussed different perceptions of the three elements from both food producers and consumers. This paper mainly discussed the negotiation process of food authenticity and food safety in the context of mobility and especially the tourism mobility; the second topic is the co-production of food authenticity and food health in the context of (re-)localization and particularly the destruction of global food network on local lifestyle and food perception; the third research agenda is the dis-continuum of food safety and food health in the process of modernization and the uniqueness of food value among different consumers. Furthermore, this research envisions the new directions on food research through both the view of food production and consumption and the integration of natural science and social science, which will promote the sustainable food culture production system in the near future.

Branding is considered as one of the most powerful tools for destination marketers. Local residents are the most important stakeholders of destination brand.Local residents can develop psychological ownership toward the destination brand because of their familiarity with destination, perceived control over destination, and involvement with destination. Destination brand psychological ownership can bring a series of positive outcomes, such as residents’ extra role behavior, positive word of mouth, helping tourists behavior, which is important for the destination’s sustainable development. This study investigates the antecedents that influencing destination brand psychological ownership. Specifically, residents’ familiarity with destination, perceived control over destination, involvement with destination, and their interactions were hypothesized to have a psotive influence on destination brand psychological ownership. The data was collected in Hangzhou of Zhejiang Province, and was analyzed using SPSS and Mplus software. The results showed that both perceived control and involvement have a significant positive effect on destination brand psychological ownership. Perceived control and involvement, destination familiarity and involvement interactively influence destination brand psychological brand ownership. The findings have important managerial implications for destination marketers. First, destination marketers can improve resident’s brand psychological ownership by giving them more control over the destination, such as communicating destination knowledge to residents by internal communication tools and improvingtheir interpersonal communication skills, in order to improve their self-efficacy. Second, investing the self into the target can enhance brand psychological ownership; therefore, destination marketers should involve residents more in destination-related activities, such as providing suggestions for destination development and take initiative to help tourists. Third, destination marketers can also enhance destination brand psychological ownership by improving the interaction of perceived control and involvement, and destination familiarity and involvement. Finally, limitations of this study and future research directions are discussed.

The wide use of Internet technology has brought in new methods and means for tourism research. As time goes on, Internet technology gradually has been applied to tourism image research. This paper took the official marketing organization and tourists as the research objects. The high-frequency words of official advertising text and tourists perceiving text were deeply analyzed and explained by using Rost Content Mining 6 software. Meanwhile, the dimensions of projected image and perceived image were extracted, and the similarities and differences between them were analyzed in the text. At last, it was found that the image of Guangzhou Qiqiao Festival had a multidimensional construction, both for its projected image and perceived image. Its projected image and perceived image had high consistency, but the dimension structure was different in some respects. On this basis, this paper constructs the image model of Guangzhou Qiqiao Festival which will enrich the research contents of the Festival & Special Event(FSE) and even the tourism image. Besides, it is also of some referential significance for the planning, marketing as well as organization of Festival & Special Event (FSE).

The tourism system and the transportation system are closely linked. On the one hand, the transportation is the lifeblood of the national economy and it’s of great strategic significance for the development of regional tourism economy and industry. On the other hand, the rapid development of the tourism industry also can promote the construction of transportation infrastructure. What’s more, the changes in tourism demand will improve the level of modernization of transportation and affect the development pattern of transportation modes. So tourism transportation has become the focus of attention of scholars. This article uses the literature research method to summarize the relevant literature about tourism transportation research at home and abroad, and deeply analyzes the current research status of tourism transportation from three perspectives: the research content, the research methods and the case studies. And the research content of tourism transportation literature at home and abroad will be analyzed from seven aspects which conclude the status of tourism transportation in the tourism system, the influence of tourism transportation on the attractiveness of tourism destinations, the role of tourism transportation in shaping the spatial pattern of regional tourism, the planning and development strategies of tourism transportation, the environmental impacts on tourism transport and the sustainable development, the interactive relationship between tourism and transportation. Finally, this paper gives prospect for research focus and direction from several aspects which conclude regional impact of high-speed rail on tourism system, the conflicts and development strategies of transportation for the rural cultural landscapes, the construction of risk assessment and prevention about tourism transportation, the assessment of cross-regional tourism traffic environmental impact and paying attention to the poor areas.

With the technological development and consumption pattern changes, hospitality industry has been actively updating its technologies and enhancing services. Thus, the information technology in hospitality operation and management is critical to the future hoteliers. Professor Cobanoglu and his team including Professor Galen, Dr. Bilgihan and Dr. Ekaterina authored the book Hospitality Information Technology: Learning How to Use it, which comprehensively introduced the applications and techniques of information technologies for hospitality management. This book use layman language to systematically explain the basic knowledge and practical applications of the hospitality information systems from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The covered topics include information technology basics, internet establishment and maintenance, restaurant information systems, hotel information systems, financial information systems, customer experience technology, internet and social media, strategic selection of information technologies for hospitality enterprises, big data analysis, project management, and the emerging smart technologies and robots for hospitality services, to name a few. The aforementioned areas provide great implications for China’s hospitality practices and teaching activities.