Theoretical analyses of the impacts of Farewell Tour of Three Gorges
“告别三峡游”的影响及理论解释

Based on the reviewing the development of Three-Gorges Program, the problem of the Farewell Tour of Three Gorges promotional program has been identified. By applying the event tourism,system dynamics and tourism marketing theories, a systematic and dynamics approach is adopted to analyze the internal structures of the Three Gorges Tourism Development and to explain and to predict the dynamic impacts of the Farewell Tour of Three Gorges. It is expected that the study provides not only an analytical framework to the similar problems but also the cautions to adopt the high risky promotional strategies. A simple model of Three Gorges Tourism Development based on the Bass model of product life cycle was constructed to replicate the basic behavior.The model is composed of four sectors thatare linked by feedback structures: tourist sector, attractionsector, public infrastructure sector and service facility sector. Tourist sector is the most important. It has been identified that tourists of Three Gorges are determined by the potential tourists, increasing rate of potential tourists, potential tourists who have lost interests before making decisions to travel and the tourists who make revisitation decisions. These four variables are governed by the feedback structures which are characterized by the delays and non-linear functions and therefore misconception is prevailing in the tourism management. It has been found out that although Farewell Tour of Three Gorges can induce more potential tourists to make travel decisions within a short time, the revisitation tourists, and the new potential tourists decline. As a result, the potential tourists reduce sharply right after the Farewell Tour of Three Gorges and can only increase very slowly in the long run if remediationactions are taken. Similar patterns are observed to the newly added tourists who visit Three Gorges. Apart from the reduction of tourists, other consequences, such as quick expansion of service capacity, vigorous and non-regulated competition, the damaged investment environment for long term public infrastructure and new attraction projects and delayed government actions accelerate the vicious cycle of the decline of Three Gorges Tourism after the implementation of the Promotional Program. The study concluded that Farewell Tour of Three Gorges is a very risky promotional program. The program in fact only benefits a few in the short term and brings long term negative effect to the tourism industry of Three Gorges Tourism.