Study on Quality Improvement of Tourism Industry in China--By Implementing Total Quality Management

Abstract

During the last three decades, tourism industry in China has been witnessed impressive development, and China has become one of the world’s most important tourism destinations as a result of the rapid growth of its economic and tourism development since economic opening and reforming in 1978. However, during the fast development, the quality issue in general has become an inevitable problem that seriously affected the competitiveness both of Chinese tourism industry and Chinese tourism enterprises in the global market. Consequently, motivating quality revolution of tourism industry in China for its sustainable development is so urgent. This paper firstly uses quantitative and qualitative methods to review total quality management (TQM) movement in China and emphasizes the need to implement TQM which is a holistic managerial approach for improving the quality of one industry’s product for its further sustainable development in Chinese tourism industry. And then SWOT method is applied to discuss advantages and problems in current Chinese tourism industry to point out four motives could promote the “acting” of TQM in Chinese tourism industry. Furthermore, for specific targets of implementation, quadrilateral relationship involved in tourism industry is analyzed and then suggestion of implementing TQM as a competitive strategy for Chinese tourism enterprises is discussed at the end of this paper.