The Evolution Of The Broker’s Function And Role In Tourism World

In the middle of the twentieth century, tourism anthropologists broke the "host tourists" model, which was a binary tourism system model, and then put forward the third role, the broker that mediated between the host and guest. They play a key role in communication between hosts and tourists, and play a unique important role in the development of tourist destination. So what kind of people is the broker in the tourism world, whether they have common characteristics, and whether their function and role could be classified. Would their function and role could change when the host culture and tourist change, if changed, what is the reason. A series of questions caused the author’s interest, therefore, this paper regards the broker as the research object, then analyzes their function and role in different stage, to find some fundamentals according to Butler’s tourist destination life cycle theory and Plog’s tourists individual mental model.This paper adopts qualitative methods, and includes seven parts, the main frame of this study is organized as the following:The first section is the introduction that explains the background, purpose and meaning. The second section is the reviews about relative research achievements at home and abroad. We can find that it lacks diachronic research in the foreign academia, while, in China, there is few study on culture broker, only some scholars has carried on some preliminary discussion. The third section is the explanation of study design. It explains the qualitative research methods, and how to obtain the research data through the field work.The fourth section is the definition of broker. This word has been used in tourism research for more than half a century, but it has not a strict and clear meaning, this would cause a problem that is the connotation is not clear, the extension is generalized. So this part first clarifies the concept of broker, and explains it from the form, the core function and so on. Then the part discusses the causes of broker’s appearance. We find that the fundamental reason is the information asymmetry between the tourists and host. Base on these two parts, we discuss the types from four dimensions, they’re the differences of communication object, the level depending on the job, the difference of behavior and will. Finally, we determine the research object of this paper.The fifth section codes the data according to grounded theory and summarizes the broker’s function and role in exploration and development stage. Comparing with the function and role in two stages, we find that influenced by the perfect degree of destination tourism system and tourists type two factors, the function of route recommendation weakens, and the function of information and coordination strengthens. At the same time, the performer has two new functions, they’re enriching experience and situation reappearance. The role of the broker would become more complex.The sixth section analyzes the relationship between broker and cultural acculturation process. Under the influence of the tourism industry, the host culture becomes a new kind of culture after cooperation, screening, contradiction, fusion four stages. During this process, the broker plays a role through sifting and example. At the same time, we also find that with the development of host culture, destination puts forward higher request to the broker. The cultural acculturation and the evolution of broker’s function influence each other.The last section is the conclusion of this article, it reviews the main ideas, points out the limitations and prospects of this paper. Diachronic research provides a new perspective for broker study, the evolution of broker’s function and role provides unique interpretation on the development of host culture. Well, whether the model of broker evolution could mix together with Butler’s model and Plog’s model still needs further research, it is also the follow-up research direction of this paper.