A Comparative Study Of Cross-Cultural Tourist Behavior

Tourism is closely related with culture. It serves as a carrier of culture while culture, which is examined, refined and promoted in traveling, is the soul of trourism. As a large culturally rich country, China is abundant in cultural resourses, which not only play a dominant role in foreign trourists'touring experiences, but offer an important means for domestic tourists to learn and pass down cultural tradition and help develop a sense of national pride for Chinese. Simultaneously, cultural resourses work as important means of promoting mutual understanding between China and the outside world. With China's rapid economic growth and increasingly higher international status, more and more foreigners would choose China as their first tourist destination and hope to have an oppotunity to learn more about this ancient and mysterious oriental nation far away. Their arrival is no doubt a great promotion of China'a tourism industry. However, cultrual differences between the east and the west constrain, to some extent, the development of China's tourism industry. Differences in value orientations, values, philosophical thoughts, way of thinking, lifestyle and eating habits, which dictate people's behavior in an invisible way and are reflected in people's daily life, may lead to cultural shocks and conflicts in the traveling process, with the shocks sometimes even resulting in discomfort, contempt or antipathy. A better understanding of cultural differences between the east and the west helps formulate appropriate tourism policies and strategies so that inbound tourists are enabled to come with curiosity and desire and return with satisfaction. In this process, as a result, local tourism industry booms and China's brilliant culture is better expressed, preserved and passed down.The current situation of tourism research both at home and abroad shows that the number of studies in tourism from a cultural perspective is ever growing, with the focus of these studies resting on cultural change, cultrual shock, social and cultural impacts of tourism. Cross-cultural research in tourism is receiving increasing attention from western academics with a growing awareness of cross-cultural perspective. Related research reveals that culture plays an important role in tourist behavior. Compared to economic policies for the development of tourism, cultural strategy is more significant to the overall industry, in other words, economic policy should be established on the basis of the cultural policy. This dissertation, in line with sociological and anthropological theories and applying cross-cultural and comparative method, examines inter-cultural tourist behavior based on an investgition and study on inbound and domestic tourists in Xi'an. The impact of cross-cultural tourist behavior on tourist destination's society and culture as well as tourists themselves is also explored.The purpose of this dissertation is to, from a cultural difference perspective, understand behavioral differences among tourists with distinct cultural background and to examine the impact of their behavior on tourist destinations and tourists themselves. Only if national cultural characteristics are taken into account, can tourism development policies be appropriately formulated; only if the awareness of preserving national culture is raised, can a sustainable development of cultural tourism be achieved.This dissertation falls into six parts. Firstly, the objective and scope of this study are stated by explicating the siganificance and grounds of the thesis topic selected, and definitions of some important terms are also explained. In addition, the first part gives a ditailed explanation of methodology applied as well as innovations and dificiencies of this dissertation.The second part is composed of a review of tourism theroies and a comprehensive statement of literature. It starts with an overall review and introduction of relative theoretical research results as well as status quo and characteristics of current study both at home and abroad. What follows is generalization and comments on these studies and theroies. An illustration of tourist behavior studies from a cross-cultural perspective in the west and east lays a theoretical foundation for further analysis in the later parts.The third part is an analysis of the cultural differences between the east and the west as well as tourist behavioral differences resulted from cultural differences. It, from the angle of cultural differences, elaborates similarities and differences in value orientations, way of thinking, and lifestyle of the western and the eastern culture. How cultural differences affect tourists in their behaviors is elaborated and analyzed afterwards.In the forth part, a comparative study on cross-cultural tourist behavior is undertaken by contrasting behaviors of domestic and international tourists in Xi'an. The considerations of how the questionnaire and interview are designed and the process of the survey are described at some length, and special emphasis is given to a cross-cultural comparative analysis of tourist motivations and satisfaction based on the statistical analysis and generalization of the data acquired in this process.Part 5 examines the impact of cross-cultural tourist behavior on the society and culture of destinations and tourist behaviors. First, it analyzes how tourist behavior affects destination's residents, environment, social sturcture, ethics and culture, languages, public sign translation, destination marketing strategy, policies for presevation and exploration of destination cultural resources as well as other issues such as quality of tourism text and translation version. Followed is the analysis of the impact of cross-cultural tourist on tourist experiences and behaviors.As a conclusion and review of the overall argumentation and study, Part 6 underlines the importance of cultural factors in modern tourism activities and points out that differences in cultures and behaviors of tourists from differenct cultural background should be well understood and respected. When tourism study is conducted from cross-cultural, sociological, anthropological and humanistic angle, it is important that tourism development strategy should be formulated in the light of cultural features of tourist destination. In this case, adaption and harmony can be achieved when different cultures meet in the process of tourism activities. On the one hand, tourists acquire travel experience of higher quality, on the other hand, cultural tourism resources are well preserved and a sustainable development is thus realized.