Study on the Change in Tourism Authenticity Demand from the Perspective of Globalization—A Case Study of Zhu-Hai

Abstract

Since the 60-70s of 20th century, Authenticity became one of the core concepts in the study of western tourist sociology[1]. Scholars studied the different aspects of it, such issues as “authenticity, tourist motivation and tourist experience”, “authenticity and cultural commoditization”[4]. Among them, the three paradigm categories, such as objective authenticity, constructive authenticity and existential authenticity, are widely accepted. The importance of authenticity to tourists and tourist destination were constantly strengthened, especially under the rapid flow of globalization and the rise of the middle class. This article is based on Zhuhai Traffic Tourist Map to design questions for investigating the relationships between Authenticity theory and the tourist motivation. The main conclusions are not the same as current academia's results: 1)Academia overrated the importance of authenticity of the tourism destination to normal tourists; 2)from the perspective of globalization, the most important authenticity type is “Existential authenticity” and the least important one is “Objective authenticity;” however, whatever type of authenticity, they are all constructed under the effect of constructive authenticity; 3) The “authenticity” core of constructive authenticity is the mix of Cultural globalization and local place culture, It is the key to the social development and tourism development.