Tea Culture Tourism Development

Along with development of the tourism industry in recent years, the exploitation of tourism resources has received more attention. When people use resources into tourism development, a lot of tourist destination constructions appear, and many tourism festivals and celebration activities are continuously emerging. Many places are still at the stage where they lack expertise and experience in the resource exploitation process, but they eagerly pursue economic success, which results in many low-level cultural tourism products, some of which are simple duplications of others. This kind of development not only leads to an investment waste, but also makes many places unable to present the real and unique characteristics of their local cultures. Therefore, the long term benefit for sustainable tourism can not be achieved if this exploitation keeps going. Since the 1980's, scholars have raised the opinion that the integration of culture and the tourism economy will benefit each other. This opinion considers tourism as that which "solicits foreign tourists using the unique culture of a particular nation to earn the foreign currency". Regarding the domestic tourists, "it is also the different cultures and customs of a place which attract the outside tourists who seek novelty". That is to say, cultural connotations can promote tourism by using its flavor, and the development of tourism in turn can promote the preservation of culture.This research paper will concentrate on the tourism development of tea culture in China. It will attempt to discuss how to use this traditional cultural resource in today's tourism exploitation, and simultaneously enable the tea culture to carry forward with time. The research will involve social investigation and literature analysis as research methods to explore the tea culture. This paper will take the tourism development of tea culture in Shandong Province as its research site, and propose a further strategic plan for developing tea culture tourism.This paper is divided into four major parts: a) preamble; b)historical development of Chinese tea culture, characteristics of Japanese tea culture and British black tea culture; c) contemporary cultural tourism development (significance, developmental status analysis, and discussion to the future exploitation), and d) the conclusion.