Qualitative Methods in Tourism Research

Abstrcat Being a relatively independent synthetic discipline, tourism has been absorbing many research methods from relational disciplines, enriching it's methodological system. In general, these research methods can be classified into qualitative methods and quantitative methods. The former include observation; interview; case research; content analysis; Q-sort; open-ended; project techniques and so on. The development of qualitative research includes "five mements": traditional periods; the modernistic phase; blurred genres; crisis of representation;and the fifth moment. The majority of foreign tourism research is firmly entrenched in the first and seconded moments. By analyzing native tourism research methods in tourism journals, we find tourism qualitative research is still in the first period in China. Chinese researchers should innovate qualitative methods. In addition, triangulation is considered as a valid method to increase reliability and validity of qualitative research.