What is the function of tourism?

At present, the scale of China's tourism industry is growing day by day, and its industrial status is constantly improving. The development of tourism has been widely valued by governments at all levels. Compared with the vigorous development of China's tourism industry, the theoretical research of tourism industrial economy is relatively backward, especially the theoretical basis of tourism industrial function and industrial status has not been well solved. This will inevitably bring a series of problems. What are the advantages of tourism? What is the degree of embodiment? Is tourism suitable as a pillar industry? Where is suitable? If these problems are not solved, it will inevitably bring some blindness to the formulation of tourism industry policies.

To understand this problem correctly, we should first start with the industrial scope of tourism. China's tourism industry has basically developed from scratch, from small to large. The understanding of the scope of tourism industry has also gone through a gradual deepening process. In China's tourism statistics, the earliest industry statistics only include the operating income of tourism management departments, that is, traditional travel agencies, hotels and scenic spots. In the second half of 1990s, with the rapid development of domestic tourism, the scope of industrial statistics has been extended to all areas of six elements of tourism, such as "travel, accommodation, eating, shopping and entertainment", involving various departments related to tourists' consumption. Now it is called generalized tourism, also known as "grand tourism". Correspondingly, tourism statistics has also changed the original definition of the scale of tourism output from the perspective of departmental output, and changed to the definition of the scope and scale of tourism activities from the perspective of tourists' needs.

Counting the industrial scale of tourism from the perspective of tourists' demand can reflect the industrial contribution of tourism more objectively, which is also a widely used idea of tourism statistics in the world. However, because tourists' consumption is scattered in all sectors of the national economy, it is difficult for tourism to exist as an independent economic sector, so it is impossible to reveal the internal relationship between tourism and other economic sectors through input-output analysis. Because tourism has such industrial characteristics and its understanding is not thorough enough, there are still two misunderstandings about the industrial function and status of tourism in some areas of China. One is the economic proportion of tourism, and the other is the industry-driven function of tourism.

One of the misunderstandings: in China's current tourism statistics system, the main indicator reflecting the economic scale is the total tourism revenue. In some places, when measuring the economic contribution of tourism, the total tourism revenue index is often directly compared with the GDP index, and the proportion of total tourism revenue to GDP is used to reflect the proportion of tourism scale in the national economy. In fact, the total tourism revenue and added value are two completely different concepts, and there is no comparability. The result of comparison will only greatly overestimate the economic proportion of tourism, resulting in a wrong understanding of the industrial status of tourism, which is not conducive to scientific and reasonable formulation of industrial development policies. This misunderstanding is based on traditional statistics, and the author calls it income proportion theory.

Myth 2: Tourism is generally regarded as an industry with strong correlation between government and academia. In order to improve the government's attention to tourism, some places often cite the multiple outputs and employment opportunities that tourism unit output value and a single employment opportunity can bring to the whole society in the explanation of tourism-related driving effects. Unfortunately, the theoretical basis of this quotation is often some explanations that lack strict scientific significance, such as "according to international calculation" and "according to estimation". Chinese scholar Li (200 1) established a more rigorous calculation model of tourism multiplier effect by using the input-output method, but the model is only aimed at the narrow sense of tourism (that is, travel agency industry) and is not convincing in explaining the broad sense of tourism multiplier effect. But in practice, many government departments are using the multiplier effect of narrow tourism to illustrate the industrial function of broad tourism. Although this conceptual replacement is often unconscious, it will objectively exaggerate the industrial relevance of tourism. This misunderstanding is based on industrial measurement, which the author calls multiplier effect theory.

Therefore, the author believes that how to scientifically understand the industrial function and status of tourism is an important and urgent topic in the study of tourism economics. Especially in the situation that more and more attention is paid to the development of tourism in all parts of the country, it is more necessary to have an objective and comprehensive understanding of the industrial function and status of tourism in order to make scientific policies on tourism industry.

In fact, the National Tourism Administration put forward the goal of cultivating tourism into an important industry in the national economy when formulating the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" for tourism development. This formulation is obviously different from the formulation of pillar industries or leading industries put forward by some provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. The author believes that the reason for this difference is the lack of scientific theoretical basis for the industrial function and industrial status of tourism.

Undeniably, the development of tourism in China is very rapid, and tourism in some areas has objectively become the industrial pillar of this region. But as a country or a province, how far is tourism from the pillar industry? This standard is still vague.

The first question, what are the standards of pillar industries? From the perspective of industrial scale, there is no universal definition in the world. From the perspective of industrial functions, American economist Rostow believes that leading industries must have three functions: one is to obtain new production functions by relying on scientific and technological progress; The second is to form a sustained high-speed growth rate; Third, the diffusion effect is strong, which has a decisive impact on the growth of other industries and even all industries. It can be seen that the industrial correlation effect is an important condition to measure whether an industry has pillar industries and leading industries.

The second question is how to measure the industrial correlation effect of tourism. This is still a difficult problem that puzzles the tourism academic circles. As mentioned above, Chinese scholars have made a special study on the industrial correlation effect of narrow tourism. However, our understanding of the scope and scale of tourism industry is based on generalized tourism, so we must use the measured data of generalized tourism to explain the industrial function of generalized tourism.

The above two problems are realistic problems that we face when formulating tourism industry policies. If these problems are not solved, the formulation of policies will be blind. The author has no doubt about the development potential and prospect of tourism. Vigorously developing tourism in various places conforms to the law of social and economic development and the inevitable requirement of improving people's living standards. However, different regions have different tourism resource endowments, economic bases and market conditions, and the environment for the development of tourism is also different, and the role of tourism in social economy is also different. All these depend on our deeper and more scientific understanding of the industrial scale and industrial function of tourism, which is also the direction of further research on the economic theory of tourism industry.