I. Development Status of the Discipline
The discipline Tourism Management originated from the Teaching and Research Office of Forest Tourism at Zhejiang Forestry College, established in 1994. In 1999, it split into two undergraduate programs: Forest Resources Protection and Recreation, and Tourism Management. In 2003, the discipline Tourism Management was set up. In 2010, the first-level discipline of Urban and Rural Planning approved by the Office of the State Council Academic Degrees Committee became one of the three main disciplines of the “Human Settlement Design and Green Building” Discipline Group of Zhejiang A & F University; as the important support force of the master’s degree program in the first-level discipline of Urban and Rural Planning, and the discipline Tourism Management. The discipline Tourism Management after 12 years of development and accumulation has achieved significant progress and improvements in aspects such as the teacher structure, laboratory construction, teaching quality improvement, award-winning scientific achievements, and approval and implementation of scientific research projects, which has made positive contributions to such aspects as tourism development, cultivation of tourism talents, scientific and technological innovation and social services in Zhejiang Province.
The discipline Tourism Management has a capable teacher team with reasonable structure in terms of its professional title, education background, and age. At present, there are 20 teachers for the discipline, including three professors and 10 associate professors. There are 10 people holding doctoral degrees (including five Ph.D. candidates), and the teachers with master’s degrees account for 90% of all teachers.
Among the teachers, there are a group of service experts who have received various rewards and social recognition. For example, Professor Xue Qunhui won the titles of “the First Batch of Excellent Teacher in Zhejiang Province” by the Zhejiang Provincial People’s Government and of “Pioneer of Educating People” of Zhejiang A & F University; Professor Yu Yiwu is employed by the Hangzhou Municipal Government as member of the Decision Advisory Committee and Assessment Expert, and serves as executive director of the Leisure Agriculture Association of Zhejiang Province and director of the Zhejiang Provincial Forest Tourism Association; Professor Zhang Mingru won the “the Third Batch of Famous Teaching Master Award of Zhejiang A & F University”; Associate Professor Xiao Shenghe is employed as the Tourism Planning & Consulting Expert for the Zhejiang Provincial Tourism Research Institute; Associate Professor Li Jian was selected into the third level of the New Century “151 Talent” program in Zhejiang Province; Associate Professor Yan Shaojun won the “Ten Meritorious Commissioners” Award of Zhejiang Province and “the Most Beautiful Agricultural Person in Zhejiang Province” Award; Lecturer Cai Bifan won the “Outstanding Commissioner of Zhejiang Provincial People’s Government” award; Professor Yu Yiwu, Associate Professor Zhang Jianguo, and Lecturer Cai Bifan act as the Starred National Leisure Agriculture and Rural Tourism Ranking Experts.
According to the evaluation report on the discipline Tourism Management in institutions of higher learning, in 1,115 tourism departments (majors) made by the authoritative journalTourism Tribunein 2013, the discipline tourism management of Zhejiang A & F University ranked the top 7% among the national institutions of higher learning, that is, the discipline tourism management in the university ranks 75thout of 1,115 tourism management majors.
II. Major Research Directions and Characteristic Advantages
Based on the characteristic “Agriculture and Forestry” of the university, the discipline Tourism Management combines the resources of university and colleges under the knowledge background of the existing Tourism Resources Development and Planning, Scenic Area Management and Service Management majors in order to form three characteristic research directions: “Forest Tourism”, “Rural Tourism” and “Health Tourism”, which each form their own advantages in their research fields (such as ecological tourism, tourism resources development and planning, and leisure and outdoor sports).
1. Forest Tourism
Research field: The research on forest tourism is divided into three levels: first, forest tourism resources; second, research on management of forest tourist area; third, health forest tourism. At the level of research on forest tourism resources, three key research fields of forest landscape resources, forest tourism environment, and forest ecological culture are set up, which constitute a comprehensive and systematic research on forest tourism resources. The above three directions both complement and promote each other.
2. Leisure Agriculture
Research Field: The research on leisure agriculture is divided into five levels: leisure agriculture resources, leisure agriculture market, farming culture, leisure agriculture planning and design, leisure agriculture operation and management, and leisure agriculture and health services.
3. Health Tourism
Research on health tourism is divided into three levels: First, the research on the construction of the theoretical system of health tourism; second, the research on health tourism resources development and management; third, integration research on health tourism products and rehabilitation health tourism products based on forests, hot springs, mountains and other resources, to form comprehensive and systematic research studies on health tourism.
III. Research Results
In the last five years, the main research achievements made by the discipline are as follows: Presiding over and mainly participating in seven national-level projects, presiding over 21 provincial-level projects, publishing more than 200 academic papers, of which two papers were collected by SSCI and SCI journals, three collected by EI, one paper with full text was reprinted by the Information Center for Social Sciences, RUC, and four papers were published in first grade journals. It has seen the publishing of five monographs and one translation book, independently compiled two textbooks, participated in compiling a textbook, and chiefly compiled one collection of papers.
The discipline continues to explore and adhere to the characteristic “university-enterprise-research” school-running model. The discipline Tourism Management is closely integrated with local economic practice, to promote the development of interdisciplinary studies and improve the theoretical level of solving the practical problems of the industry. The backbone teachers of the discipline actively strive for various social resources and have undertaken and presided over more than 300 social science and technology service projects in the form of cooperation, with a total expenditure of more than 20 Million Yuan.
IV. Talent Cultivation
In order to improve the undergraduate talent cultivation quality and adhere to the school-running orientation and discipline characteristics, after repeated discussions of the discipline, it was put forward that the undergraduate program of Tourism Management should cultivate the thinking of “highlighting the features and giving full play to advantages”. First of all, we must gradually implement the measures to jointly cultivate undergraduates at universities both at home and abroad, specifically as follows: 1) exchange students with Southwest Forestry University for cultivation; 2) intend to jointly cultivate and confer the degree with the universities having similar discipline characteristics in Taiwan, Japan, the United States and Australia, for which the study period adopts the mode of 2+2 or 3+1. Secondly, the master’s degree program in the first-level discipline Urban and Rural Planning was successfully launched in 2011, and the second-level discipline program “Urban and Rural Tourism Planning and Management” was independently set up under the first-level discipline program “Urban and Rural Planning” in 2014, to provide a more suitable path for the undergraduates in Tourism Management majors to further study for a master’s degree.
Over the last decade, the discipline Tourism Management has provided more than 3,000 undergraduates with Tourism Management majors to society, who are distributed in major provinces and cities in China. The occupation types cover provincial-level, city-level and county-level tourist administrations, well-known international travel agencies, five-star hotels, scenic areas and companies like Zhejiang International Tourism Group Co., Ltd., China Travel Service Zhejiang and China International Travel Service Co., Ltd. In addition, there are graduates employed by airlines as pilots, admitted to government departments as civil servants by passing their respective entrance examinations, and further studying for a master’s degree in universities with strong influence at home and abroad, such as Zhejiang University, Nankai University, Jinan University, Beijing International Studies University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hainan University, Zhejiang A & F University, and Kyoto University, Ecole Hoteliere Lausanne, and relevant universities in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States.
Graduates in the last ten years have successively made remarkable achievements in related fields. For example, the 2003 graduate Zhao Xinli was awarded the honorary title of the First Batch of “Top Ten Outstanding Young Volunteers” in Sichuan Province, and was reported on by CCTV inthePeopleprogram and other many sites; the 2004 graduate Liu Xiaoming won the title of “Top Ten Catering Professional Manager” in 2012; the 2004 graduates Zhu Zhen and Hu Rong have been promoted to Associate Professor at Zhejiang A & F University; the 2005 graduate Jin Hangyong acts as General Manager of New Century Grand Hotel Hangzhou.
V. Condition Construction
The existing academic platforms of the discipline include: the first-level master’s degree program in Urban and Rural Planning; the second-level master’s degree program in Urban and Rural Tourism Planning and Management; the “Landscape Architecture•Beautiful Countryside” Research Center, the Ecological Tourism and Health Promotion Research Center; the Tourism Resource and Environmental Monitoring and Evaluation Laboratory and the Tourism Economy Teaching and Research Office for the discipline, with the laboratory area measuring 353m2, and the total value of the instruments and equipment amounting to 1.205 million Yuan.
