The Research On The Development Strategy Of Zen-tea Culture In Shimen County

As a specific branch of tea culture, the Zen-tea culture is an innovative combination of Zen culture and tea culture in China, catering to both refined and popular tastes. Thus, the Zen-tea culture tourism of China, which has a great potential for development, has been chosen as the subject of this paper.Shimen County, located in the Hunan province of China, is the main research site of this study owing to its beautiful landscape, abundant tourism resource, long history of tea plantation and the profound zen-tea culture. It is also known as the authentic origin of tea meditation and tea ceremony and known for its unique Zen culture embodied in many zen stories. Shimen county government strives to create its brand image with the slogan “creating Shimen into the Capital of Chinese Zen-tea and the source of Zen-tea in the world”.Although now the zen-tea culture tourism in Shimen is well-prepared for development after long-term accumulating, the status quo is far from being satisfied. Against such backdrop, this study focuses on approaches to promoting Zen-tea culture tourism in Shimen, strategies in deepening and widening its tourism development and in enhancing its brand appeal to tourists. Based on the data and information collected through literature review, field research, questionnaire and interview, this paper investigates the geographic location, natural and socio-economic conditions and the tea industry of Shimen County, analyzes the brand management of its tea industry, examines the Zen-tea culture history in Shimen County and the status quo of Zen-tea culture tourism in this region through SWOT analysis and market research methods.Feasible strategies and development suggestions are proposed by this paper on the basis of sustainable development thinking, innovation theory, experiential economy theory and Maslow’s Needs-Hierarchy Theory. To be specific, the development strategy of Zen-tea culture tourism is positioned as a turnaround strategy: facilitating the realization of external opportunities by addressing internal disadvantages and promoting internal upgrading by capitalizing the external opportunities, thus contributing to the prosperous development of Zen-tea culture tourism in Shimen.This paper also presents an innovative and multi-mode tourism development strategy, proposes related promoting strategies of the experiential brand through diversified cultural dissemination channels to build a top brand image both locally and globally, and comes up with sustainable development strategies regarding to the personnel training, infrastructure construction and ecological conservation.