Life cycle model of tourism destination

Like other products, tourist resorts have their ups and downs, that is, the life cycle of resorts. However, it is the contribution of Canadian tourism scientist R.W.Butler in 1980 [1] to systematically introduce the concept of life cycle in marketing into the study of tourism resort management. His description of the life cycle model of tourist destinations is that the life cycle of tourist destinations begins with the "exploration" of a few tourists who like adventure and don't like commercial tourist destinations. In the "participation" stage, the number of tourists further increased, because local people actively participated in providing leisure facilities to consumers and subsequent advertising. In the "development" stage, the number of tourists grows faster, and the power to control tourism management is mostly transferred from local people to foreign companies. In the consolidation stage, although the total number of tourists is still increasing, the growth rate has slowed down. As for the stagnation stage, the number of tourists has reached its peak, and the tourist destination itself no longer makes tourists feel that it is a particularly fashionable place. In the "declining" stage, because tourists are attracted by new resorts, this trip will make a living by visiting declining day-trip tourists and weekend tourists.

Western scholars have been doing empirical research on the theoretical model of tourism destination life cycle. Although they all found the difference between the actual situation and this theoretical model to varying degrees, their research results all supported the general view of this theory. In fact, although the specific form of the life cycle curve of a tourist destination varies with its own development speed, accessibility, government policies and competition, each tourist destination will inevitably go through several stages: early exploration, local participation, development, consolidation, stagnation and decline. No resort can satisfy the tastes of tourists of all ages. However, from the management point of view, there is not a tourist resort operator who does not expect the resort he developed to survive as long as possible on the premise of providing him with profits. Although we believe that "eternal life" is impossible, we also believe that it is not difficult to achieve the goal of "longevity" after understanding the factors that affect the life of tourist resorts and making wise decisions.