mproving Tourism Management In Sacred Cultural Site: The Importance of Difference Among  Visitors

Introduction
The visitor management is one of the most vital part of tourism management. The influence of globalization has significantly impacted on the outlook of tourism industry. A major characteristic reflected from such impact is that fierce competition has become inevitable in tourism industry in a global context. On the basis of such impact, tourists resource has gradually become the decisive factor determining the long-run survival and continuous development of organizations operating in tourism industry. Questions such as 'how to increase visitors' satisfactions and cultivate their loyalty to attractive sites' hence has become impressive issue that needs to be immediately addressed. However, it is also seen that different visitors, while seems to have different tastes and expectations from sites, also portrays correspondingly different patterns of behaviors, some of which could generate detrimental influence to the conservation of tourism sites. This paper aims at exploring potential elements that contribute most to the management's adoption of differentiation strategy over tourists management in sacred cultural sites.
 
Background of the Study
Tourism is recognized as a powerful force of change in the economy in both the developed and in the least developed countries (Gumus F, Eskin I, Veznikli A N & Gumus M, 2007). The tourism management is relatively a new concept raised in recent decades. Its fundemental purpose is to ensure that tourists' satisfactions can be met and their expectations could be achieved. This would simultaneously increase the quality of resource maintenance, upgrade tourism environment, deliver desired emotions and enhance safty and security during the trip. This concept proposes a win-win situation between human beings and ecological environment. Sustainability has become increasingly recognized by the world due to a series of impressive issues, which are extremely negative and urgent. The deterioration of ecological diversity and natural resources has been commonly aware to all. However, the excessively rapid growth in tourism industry is considered to produce one of the killer impacts on our planet. Furthermore, despite the scenario of natural resource, human civilization and conservation of cultures is also perceived to be under severe threats. Therefore, tourism management, applied to those sacred cultural sites, is in essence a double-edge sword. On one hand, tourists' expectations could be better comprehended, communicated and acknowledged and on the other hand, managing different visitors type could also facilitate to strengthen the conservation of such previous assets of human beings.
 
Problem Statement
Anticipating and preparing to deal with the threat of crises precipitated by disaster from natural and people-made catastrophes is an important challenge facing tourism (Pforr C & Hosie P J, 2008). Most managements operating in tourism industry are highly aware of the necessity of managing different tourists in sacred cultural sites. However, less of them do portray understandings of various elements contributing to such necessity of management efforts. These elements collectively dominate tourists' patterns of behaviors, but inadequate assessment and comprehensive review continues to play down the importance and significance of management of different types of visitors in sacred cultural sites. To gain sufficient knowledge upon such issue, an in-depth analysis focusing on the elements contributing to tourists' different patterns of behaviors is required to be explored.
 
Research Topic:
Managing different visitor types in sacred cultural sites
 
Management Question:
Why managing different visitor types at a sacred cultural site is necessary?
 
Research Question:
Is cultural background a predominant element contributing to the necessity of management over different visitor types?
 
Research Objectives:
1. Improve public awareness of special nature of sacred cultural sites and examine the factors responsible for the significance of management over classification of visitors in a sacred cultural site.
2. Establish the relationship between cultural difference and management focus of visitors types in sacred cultural site.
 
Hypothesis
Our hypothesis to be tested is that there is certain degree of relationship between the cultural background of visitors and necessity of management over different types of tourists in sacred cultural sites.
 
Significance of Study
We consider that the significance of the study will be to:
1. Improve management awareness of significance in category management and differentiation management over tourists in sacred cultural sites.
2. Enhance literature-based evidence on public sectors on tourism industry.
3. Increase tourists' awareness of their behavior patterns during travels.
4. Facilitate management to establish more effective strategies in tourism industry.
 
Literature Review
Focusing on the correlation between management's adoption of differentiate tourists in sacred cultural site, we have analysed and reviewed four articles potentially reflecting the relevant independent variables contributing to such management concept. These five articles are categorized into three major sections of dependent variables.
 
Article 1. Special Nature of Cultural Sites
Lim C and McAleer M (2005) have defined one of the primary challenges facing tourism management as the establishment of a profitable, ecological and cultural-conservative industry, which simultaneously could achieve a satisfying experience for visitors and raising standards of living in the host community. Their perspectives have specifically linked the special nature of cultural sites with adoption of different tourism management mothods. With the fast-pace growth of tourism industry, there appears to be a set of problematic aspects emerging in the tourism management. These issues have resulted in damages of sites resources and tourists' dissatisfactions, which might direct to unsustainable development of sacred cultural sites.
 
Cultural sites have a very special nature differentiating themselves from those natural heritage. The main attractions of cultural sites lie in the existence of cultural relics, buildings and ruins heritaged from the history. Such assets of human civilization has recorded the historical movement of human beings and have reflected particular status and activities of human beings during specific time. Cultural sites therefore bear a combination of authenticity, thematic,  monopolistic and non-renewable nature. Due to such special nature of cultural sites, management usually develop correspondingly different special requests to tourists. In the first place, as cultural sites bear thematic nature, it is expected that the tourists showing interests could be those who comprehend the history and come with willingness of understanding the culture. In the second place, it is simultaneously expected that tourists have certain level of knowledge upon the history and have reasonably conducted research upon the cultural background of the sites. This would facilitate tourists to gain more joy and higher satisfaction. Consequently, as all historical relics, buildings and ruins presented in the exhibition are real items, they could hardly be repaired if damages occur. Such non-renewable nature would require tourists to incorporate relatively high personal qualities and try not to generate negative influence to the cultural sites. However, while research studies have demonstrated the fact that tourism management have commonly agreed that the minimization of damages to resource and maximization of tourists' satisfactions are the most fundemental objectives, seldom of them could align this concept to the special nature of cultural sites and higher request of tourists. During practical operations, there are many questionable aspects observed leading to the failure of fulfillment of both objectives.
 
Article 2. Tourists Overload: Burdens to Local Communities
According to Eshliki S A and Kaboudi M (2012), the authors have associated the necessity of managing different types of tourists to the urgent demand of ease of local community's pressure under tourism industry. They specifically stated that while the roles of tourism in the economic development of cities and in bringing several benefits to the locals are well recognised, tourism development has also affected the community in various ways. As is well known to all, tourism industry has a seasonal cycle, where a difference between off-peak season and on-peak season tends to be normal. However, while such difference cannot be effectively controlled, especially during the circumstance where the overload of visitors has exceeded the capacity and volume of the cultural sites, a situation where the local community, visitors and sites suffer significant loss would occur.
 Australia：The Importance of Difference Among  Visitors 代写
Another peer reviewed article from Nunkoo R & Ramkissoon H (2009) has further highlighted traffic congestion, increasing crime rates, water generation and increasing cost of living as typical threats from tourism industry to the local communities. Technically speaking, visitor flow could bring about considerable economic interests to the cultural sites. However, it is perceived that once such flow exceeds the capability of cultural sites, the benefits cannot be measured by short-run remarkable economic returns. This is due to the fact that once such cultural heritage has been damaged, there tends to be no way to recover it. No matter how advanced technologies are employed, it just cannot ever return to be a masterpiece of history. Under such influence, the long-term interests is significantly damaged. Beside, overload of visitors would also bring about negative influence to the local communities and tourists themselves.
 
 
Article 3. Managing Different Types of Visitors
Refering to Lindberg K, McCool S and Stankey G (1996), the authors have indirectly defined differentiation of visitors as an important variable contributing to the management over different types of visitors (e.g. categorization or differentiation management). Their opinion indicated that visitors do differ from one another and conditions that one visitor group find highly satisfactory might be viewed as completely unsatisfactory by another group, which typically highlighted the limitations of the visitor satisfaction concept. The level of tourists' satisfactions have direct association with people surrounding. One group of tourists' noises may negatively influence another group's experience. While the tourists density becomes excessively high, such influence would become more negative. As a result, managing different types of visitors and classify them into different categories is extremely essential to carry out scientific tourism management. There could be various elements such as demographic (e.g. gender, age, nationaility, etc), personality, psychological and econmoic factors determining different types of visitors and their corresponding behavior patterns. It is extremely important and necessary of tourism management to measure, record and identify such factors as this would facilitate management to better comprehend the motivational elements of visitor's behaviors. However, it is perceived that cultural background, which could include visitor's religion, belief, value, attitudes and personal accomplishment, is the most relevant factor relating to the management of tourists in sacred cultural sites. Intuitively, cultural background is regarded as the strongest indicator that could most effectively assist tourism management to identify and recognize different levels of tourists in a sacred culture sites while rest of other elements tend to have weak correlations. Nevertheless, such perception is merely established on the basis of literature-based evidence and our intuitive cognitions. Empirical evidence need to be collected and carried out for further verification.
 
Methodology
This section would present the overview of methods employed in the research study. Our paper would include areas such as research design, population, sample and sampling techniques, data collection and analysis.
 
Research Design
Our study majorly would focus on the evaluation of significance of cultural background, as an independent variable's contribution to the dependent variable, necessity of management of different types of visitors in sacred cultural sites. It is expected that the research designed shall eventually achieve the objectives set out in previous contents.
 
Population
Population is considered to be the entire set of group or members from which a sample is extracted for data processing. As it would be infeasible to collect data from various locations, we have determined to set the cultural site as Palace Museum located in the Capital of China, Peking, as the specific sacred site for research analysis. We have as well researched the governmental official website of Peking Tourism Association (Statistics, 2012). It is discovered that the total number of tourist in April in Peking has exceeded 1000000, while more than 20% of them have been to Palace Museum. The website has also indicated that managers working in different travel agents in Peking could exceed 5000. Moreover, through telephone investigation to a famous Chinese travel agent, Xiecheng Group Ltd, the staff has told us that there have been 60 regular managers leading more than 100 tourists to the Palace Museum. Due to the limitation of research capacity, 100 candidates of tourists representing 50 % of the whole population and 60 candidates of tourism managers standing for 75% of the overall population of managers in Xiecheng Group Ltd would be contained in the sample.
Sample Framework                                    
                                    Tourists     Managers     Total
Population: No. of managers and tourists in Xiecheng     100     60     160
Same size for our research project:                 50     30     80
Proportion: percentage                       50%     50%     50%

Sampling and Sampling Technique
As the census would apparently be infeasible to be adopted in this research paper, we would accordingly employ survey type of research in which a sample of 80 (50 tousits & 30 managers) shall be extracted from the population of 160 for study. We would also adopt a multistage stratified sampling method to select elements, where the population will be divided into domestic (here referred as Chinese) and foreign tourists in the first place. Next, the two categories would be further grouped into Females and Males, which should guarantee a fair representation of each group of institutions.
 
Data Collection
Both primary and secondary data would be collected focusing on the relationship between cultural background and necessity of management efforts in terms of different visitors types in sacred cultural sites. We would firstly obtain introductory letter from UB business units to let candidate get familiar with our study and introduce himself/herself as well as seek their consent for the study.

Most of our designed questions will be matched with close-ended type and the candidates will be asked to tick proper box fitting their perceived answers. However, there would be some areas requiring candidates to give own opinions. This would help to include and combine both qualitative and quantitative data into our research project. For quantitative data collection, the answers of questionnaires would be divided into different marks with numerical information for further processing. Here, two types of figure would be collected. The first category would be dependent variable, which is the level management's adoption visitors differentiation management concept in sacred sites. The rest of the data would be classified as independent variables who would contribute to the changes in dependent variables.
                                           
Dependent Variables                 Independent Variables
                                           
Extent of Tourism Differentiation           1. Awareness of special nature
Management Among Different Visitors           of Cultural sites      
                              2. Tourisits overload and pressures
                              on local communities      
                              3. Natural difference between
                              visitors            
                                           
            <----------Mutually Correlate --------->      

Data Analysis
Candidates' answers to the structured questionnaires would be rated in percentages and such figure for each section of the study would be analysed. We plan to employ either Microsoft Excel or Statistical Package for Service Solution (SPSS) as the primary technique for data analysis and interpretation of results.
 
Limitations
There are some limitations of the research paper, which we feel appropriate and necessary to outline in this section. In the first place, as we were unable to conduct comprehensive review covering all sacred cultural sites in global environment, the analysis has a narrow scope merely focusing on the situation in China. In the second place, most candidates are either our colleagues or friends, who apparently are familiar with us. We appear to be infeasible to obtain a random population and therefore, the accuracy and comprehensiveness of our research may be undermined. Eventually, tourists may come in different seasons and our research figure are basically gathered from tourists who just finished their trip in April. As we are unable to access tourists who have experience in other seasons, the fairness, comprehensiveness and objectiveness of the research study may be harmed.
 
 Australia：The Importance of Difference Among  Visitors 代写
 
Reference
 
Eshliki S A & Kaboudi M, (2012), "Community Perception of Tourism Impacts and Their Participation in Tourism Planning: A Case Study of Ramsar, Iran", Procedia-Social and Behavioural Sciences 36 pp 333-341.
 
 
Gumus, F., Eskin, I., Veznikli, A.N., & Gumus, M. (2007). "Availability of rural tourism for Gallipoli villages: the potentials and attitudes". International Tourism Biennial conference, Turkey, pp 157.
 
Lindberg K, McCool S & Stankey G, (1996), "Rethinking Carrying Capacity", Research Notes and Reports, Vol. 12 No. 4 pp 461-466.
 
Lim C & McAleer M, (2005), "Ecologically sustainable tourism management", Environmental Modelling & Software 20 pp 1431-1438.
 
Nunkoo, R., & Ramkissoon, H. (2009). "Small island urban tourism: a residents' perspective", Routledge, 13(1), 37–60.
 
Pforr C & Hosie P J, (2008), "Crisis Management in Tourism", Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, Vol. 23, No. 2-4, pp 249-264.
 
Statistics, 2012, Bei Jing Tourism Association, Accessed as <www.bjta.gov.cn>, viewed 14th May 2012.
 Australia：The Importance of Difference Among  Visitors 代写