Driving force and development strategies of agro-tourism in China

Agro-tourism is a form of tourism related to agricultural resources and rural landscape which integrates the agro-demonstrations, pastoral sceneries, folk experiences, leisure travels and holiday entertainments through proper planning and development of tourism. In recent years, agro-tourism has sprung up all across China and has gradually become not only a new form of agro-business but also a new force of development in tourism. The development of agro-tourism was critical for enriching agro-industry, increasing farmer income, promoting optimization and upgrading rural industrial infrastructure and expanding the scope of tourism. There are currently 359 national agro-tourism demonstration sites approved by the ministry of agriculture and tourism administration. This implies that China now has 1.5 million happy farm houses within its borders. In 2010, agro-tourism achieved an operation income of 120 billion Yuan, received 400 million tourists and led the employment of 15 million farmers. This paper reviewed domestic and international agro-tourism research and development in China for a more comprehensive knowledge about this sector. Foreign scholars have done so lot on the theory and empiricism of agro-tourism, community participation of women, diversification of operations, role of multi-functional agriculture and agro-heritage in tourism, impact of climate change on agro-tourism, sustainable development of agro-tourism, etc. Domestic scholars have focused mainly on empirical analysis of the concept of agro-tourism, state of development and countermeasures of agro-tourism, impacts of agro-tourism and festive tourism. This paper also analyzed the development of China’s agro-tourism from the perspective of market demand, urbanization and rural economic restructuring. It discussed the driving forces of tourism demand, tourism development, accelerated urbanization, “re-turn-to-nature” drive, rural economic restructuring, agriculture, and tourism breakthrough achievement. Based on analysis of devel-opments in China’s agro-tourism, four driving forces were identified. The nation-wide tourism was driven by regional transportation, city development, scenic spot and resource monopoly. It was clear that the more driving factors there were, the more beneficial was the development of agro-tourism. The paper emphasized that under the concept of market economy, the development of agro-tourism always required a variety of external conditions for the jointly promotion of agro-tourism. Also with changing internal and external conditions, the driven factors for agro-tourism development changed. In conclusion therefore, development strategies were presented as the driving force of China’s agro-tourism industry. Traffic-driven strategy and characteristics of product and urban development influenced strategic in-depth theme development of hot spot tourism sites. Link-driven development and unique-resource driven strategies were the brands of development for integrated mode of agro-tourism development. The development of agro-tourism also needed the involvement and coordination of various stakeholders, including government, community and tourism operators. The analyses in this article were in the hope of accelerating healthy and sustainable development of China’s agro-tourism.