A STUDY ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ALTERNATIVE TOURISM IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
回顾了替代性旅游的历史与特征，将其分为自助型和团体型，并论证了替代性旅游作为可持续旅游实践者的作用，有助于修正大众旅游的缺陷、丰富旅游吸引力。
Facing the inevitable damage to environment from conventional mass tourism, it is corrective thinking that the alternative tourism should be regarded as positive and health tourism model compared with conventional mass tourism. In this paper, the authors cited this conception with careful considerations which included history recall and characteristic analyze. Furthermore, the efforts of combining alternative tourism and sustainable development together lead a new profound study for the subject. As popular thinking, alternative tourism was beginning with natural-oriented little scale tourism, such as eco-tourism, which was based on the positive motivations both pursuing convenient tourism setting and avoiding the environment damage. So the alternative tourism study can be the additional constitutions of tourism study and enlarge the eyesight of scholars. According to the organization patterns and scale, the alternative tourism can be divided into two parts: self-service type and group type. Self-service type refers to the DIY tourists or family members that have the same tourism motives producing from their own minds. While the group type is organized by tourism agencies with economic purposes, and those tourism motives are united before departure although individual needs were cared. Some examples were listed in the paper. In fact, from self-service type to group type, and then to mass tourism, we set up the inner connection of tourism models. Sustainable tourism is the ideal goal of tourism development, and has intensive relationship with alternative tourism. Alternative tourism utilize its practical running experiences to refine the tourism model and revise the defects of mass tourism, in the long term the tentative try of alternative tourism also enrich the tourism attracts and lighten the market pressure of hot places. Only the basic requirements are satisfied can the sustainable tourism be in full bloom, and the alternative tourism just takes the role of practitioner to follow the sustainable plan that makes the sustainable tourism feasible. Furthermore, obeying the restraint of sustainability, we can avoid the possible wrongdoing that tourist activities fall into the pollution and damage mud of mankind behavior. In general, alternative tourism open more dimensions for tourism study and make the sustainable tourism more possible.