Earthquake Disaster Beichuan Tourism Development Strategy Research

Last year's devastating earthquake changes the original development pace of Beichuan, one of the worst affected regions during the Great Sichuan Earthquake of May 12, 2008. The establishment of a new development strategy becomes the focal point of post-disaster. The "Green industry", the tourism industry, is able to bring "smart growth"and improve the quality of life for local people. There is no doubt that the tourism industry plays more important role in regeneration programs. This paper focuses on the post-disaster strategy in travel and tourism.Perhaps, strategic management is the most important activity undertaken by any organization. However, there are very few texts that apply the concepts of strategic management to the specific context of travel and tourism. Essentially, strategy for tourism is a process through which tourism organizations decide upon where they want to be in the future and the most appropriate or effective means of getting there. There are four elements of strategy of Beichuan:The first element is a clear understanding of the external or competitive environment and internal resources there. It's strategic analysis. The external strategic analysis focuses on two areas, the macro-environment and the micro- environment. The former is the broad environment. We can get more information of the development trends of tourism from the analysis. The latter analysis embraces competitors, suppliers and stakeholders. The strategic analysis is the first stage to promote the core competencies of tourism in Beichuan.The second one is to establish simple, consistent and long-term goals. According to the practical experiences of domestic and overseas cases, the goals are divided into three correlative stages objectives.The third element is guiding ideas or general principle of the strategic implementation.The fourth one is the strategic choice, the major part of the paper, which focuses on developing different strategic options and the selection of the most appropriate option for Beichuan. The paper proposal relates to tourism industrial strategy, tourism destination strategy, tourism image strategy, product and product portfolio strategy, space layout& routes and tourism crisis management. Hope the paper can be a reference to the policy-making organizations and the other earthquake affected areas.