Authenticity Of Ethnic Tourism

Tourism, different from other industries, is not only an economic activity but also a cultural activity. Local people benefits from this economic activity, and inevitable, there are some negative impact. In this context, the authenticity of tourism became a focus in the tourism research field. The controversy include what is authenticity in tourism and what does it mean.This dissertation summarizes the different essays. In this paper four approaches are concluded, objectivism, constructivism, postmodernism and existentialism. Objectivism argues that authenticity is a basic attributes of tourism attraction, so tourists can't distinguish whether authentic or inauthentic, because the conception is object-related. Just experts and scholars can be made a judgment. Constructivism argues that in tourism the authenticity was constructed by tourist and tourism attraction. Authenticity is an uncertain conception. Base on Heidegger's theory, Existentialism find authenticity is a process tourists try to attain a state that existentialism called being. Postmodernism even deny this conception.Different observers and tourism forms bring on different views. So before define authenticity researcher must confirms tourism form and observer. Base on the stakeholder theory, it is argue that people participate in tourism can be an estimator to define the meanings of authenticity.The stakeholders of ethnic include tourists, local people and tourism enterprise. In ethnic tourism, tourists reckon authenticity as a kind of ideal, because tourists try to get rid of alienated. Authenticity for local people means a kind of Cohesion.This dissertation takes ethnic tourism in XiaHe as a study case in which Zang minority culture as main tourism attraction. This study indicates the authenticity in ethnic tourism have three meanings: Objectivism, Constructivism and Existentialism. Tourists judge whether local culture is traditional depend on ethnic building and explanations provide by governor. This means Objectivism and Constructivism authenticity are main factors that influence tourists' experience. But the experience which means searching for Existentialism authenticity is tourists' goal.All these three meanings have different functions in tourism development. Understanding the authenticity can be a great help for tourism sustainable development, like tourist destination culture protection, tourist destination image design and so on.