The Psychology of Western Independent Tourists and Its Impacts on Chinese Tourism Management

This thesis is concerned with the psychology of western independent tourists and its impacts on Chinese tourism management. First, it discusses the different psychological modes under the different historical and cultural backgrounds between China and the West, including mode of thinking, mode of motivated behavior, mode of religion and ethics, and mode of aesthetic values; then, it makes a specific analysis of the tourism psychology of western independent tourists; finally, it expounds the impacts of western independent tourists’ psychology on several aspects of Chinese tourism management, such as the respective management style of tourism departments, the interdepartmental communication and cooperation, the quality of guide service and the tourism education.


Introduction
Independent tourism has become the mainstream on the present tourist market.Of all the main tourist reception countries, some have up to 70%-80% market share for independent tourism while others have as high as 90%.Nowadays, operating ability and reception capacity have also become important signs which measure the tourist maturity in a country or a region.With the influx of western FITs (Full Independent Tourists) into our domestic market and the constant expansion of cultural and psychological exchange among countries, the psychology of western FITs exerts prominent and tremendous influence on tourist industry in China.The authoritative department estimates that, in the coming 50 years, China will attach greater importance to independent tourism, especially western independent tourism.Thus it is necessary to make a detailed analysis of the psychology of western independent tourists according to their historical and cultural background and put forward the corresponding management strategies for the development of our tourism economy.

Discussion of the Key Term in This Study
Internationally, FIT (Foreign Independent Tourist or Foreign Individual Tourist) means an independent tourist in a foreign land.It illustrates a tour made by individuals according to especially drafted plans, or a tour undertaken by a travel agency in accordance with the tour plan carried on together with the wholesale dealer.
In China, FIT can refer to Full Independent Tour and Full Independent Tourist.It has two layers of meaning: one is a backpacking tourism and the other is pre-paid tourism without a guide's whole-journey company.For the latter, tourists can select tour schedules and routes by themselves, and then travel agencies will make some arrangements for their plane tickets, hotels and so on.Nowadays, the second layer of meaning is often adopted to mean FIT whose characteristics are autonomy, flexibility and diversity.

Historical and Cultural Background of Different Travel Psychology between Chinese FITs and Western FITs
Many years ago, tourists setting foot on China were mostly those with exotic blond hair.With the economic reform and opening up, countless Chinese began to know and be familiar with traveling.With all kinds of purposes, many a Xu Xiake (a well-known traveler in ancient China) nowadays is rushing on the way of "strolling around the scenery", and the East were meeting with the West unprecedentedly from then on.However, both sides often find that the gulf is not limited to the manner we behave in business or on other important occasions only.For personages of tourism circle, who are always attempting to eliminate the gulf between the two sides, would find more profound meaning of the differences while exploring them more deeply.In recent years, the western cultural factors permeate through the Chinese tourist market continually.Since "culture is the cornerstone of the tourism", cultural integration should be the aim of development and innovation of tourism.China, at a fast pace, is opening up a wider tourist market on the theme of "world culture".As shown in FIGURE 1, we see the connection among culture, psychology and tourism, which sufficiently display the psychological differences between Chinese FITs and western FITs owing to the different historical and cultural background on the other side.1.2.1 Different Historical and Cultural Background between Chinese and Westerners Under the impact of natural environment and other constraints, generations of Chinese people who were said to be pinched out with ocher soil by a legendary female--Nv Wa, had realized the giant differences between themselves and westerners who were thought to be derived from the sea water and brave enough to open up overseas.Thus, two civilizations were formed--"agro-farming civilization" in China and "marine civilization" in the West.
1.2.1.1 "Agro-farming Civilization" in China In China, the social ideas in conformity with the agro-farming economy enable the Chinese nationality to form the travel notion of "settle with favor and shift with fear".It was the Confucian School of the pre-Qin period that proposed travel theory first in Chinese ancient times.The Confucians thought that travel behavior as one activity for life, might accord with such etiquette norms as loyalty and filial piety, chastity and justice, ethics-cultivation based on scenery and enlightening by education.For example, Chinese leaps to the ocean shown by Zhen He who traveled to the West in the 15 th century, took half a century earlier than the western tour of "finding the New World".At that time, the scale, capability and sea-worthiness ability in the Chinese fleet were leading in the world.Blue.Dale, a French historian, even made a provoking hypothesis:" if the yacht of China continued advancing to the Cape of Good Hope at that time, what will be the outcome?"In other words, world connection of cultural circle might come to be realized by China to its full potential.China didn't continue the bond advancement in the ocean, but implemented a ban policy.In addition to political reasons, as a continental agricultural country, China has its own changeless character--seeking security and calmness, wishing to stay home, etc.Just as what Paul.Kennedy said:" besides funds and other hindering factors, the conservative idea held by Confucians was an important reason why China fell back then and the social shape of "home-country isomorphism" also led to the introvert character of the ancient Chinese people who were earnest and down-to-earth, never wondering traveling overseas.

"Marine Civilization" in the West
In the West, the unique "marine civilization" makes people more active, enthusiastic and adventurous.They seldom have such introverted thought as Chinese do for their different civilization.So we can often find abandoned village sites of farmers among a lot of European countries, regardless of their sizes that are relatively mobile.Social psychology of homesickness and parting-sadness in Chinese traditional travel culture is strange to people of the western coastal nationalities who never mind taking risk of traveling and put great emphasis on nature-control and prospects in future.Compared with introverted Chinese people, the extroverted westerners generally prefer to travel about.That could be the reason why the foreigners coming to China for cultural exchanges always far outnumber those Chinese going abroad with various purposes.

Different Psychological Modes of Travel under Chinese and Western Cultural Patterns
Through the comparison of cultural patterns, four psychological differences between China and the West are identified: mode of thinking, mode of motivated behavior, mode of religion and ethics, and mode of aesthetic values.

Mode of Thinking
Chinese and western modes of thinking are different.First, the former is holistic while the latter is analytic: in the eyes of Chinese, hot dog and bread make a sandwich while the sandwich is made up of hot dog and bread in the eyes of westerners.Second, the former is common-ground-seeking while the latter is difference-seeking: integration, as the political structure in Chinese feudal society, also requires the fusion of society and personal belief, which brings about the idea for great unity of traditional cultures; westerners are curious about natural profound mystery, creating the scientific spirit for exploring the unknown.Third, the former is inductive while the latter is deductive: Chinese traditional way of thinking stresses one's direct experience.They are used to concluding practice, experience and inner-comprehension based on their preference, making indistinct concepts or categories of motto style; westerners always regard deduction as an advanced way of thinking which can derive the unknown from the known.

Mode of Motivated Behavior
According to the analysis of tourist psychology, people's travel behavior is quite different from each other.For different behaviors always stem from different tourist motives, we should sort out the motives before research into the behaviors.Tourist motives are different between Chinese and westerners: For Chinese, their desire for unity and stability (such as balance, harmony, non-conflict, etc) is quite prominent while the demand for diversity and variability is very weak.That's why Chinese people lack motives for adventure tourism; for westerners, they have a strong sense of exploration, and even adventure to satisfy individual curiosity, and show athletic ability, conquering themselves and even the world.With introverted character for tourism, Chinese people look at life with a clear vision--prefer calm landscape touching the string of homesickness to those fascinating but elusive goals; make inland travels rather than navigation travels; pay more attention to aesthetic experience of heart and training of morals while going on a tour than the objective investigation of the external things.For example, the ancient Chinese regarded moon as a symbol of reunion, and a man traveling far away from home placed homesickness on the moon often.Bright moon has become the cultural prototype and primitive image of homesickness, wish of reunion and dispersal of parting sorrow.In general, these characteristics above have deeper but constrained influence on national tourist psychology.

Mode of Religion and Ethics
In the realm of human cultural activities, religion always plays an important role.It closely relates with science and other social consciousness such as philosophy, psychology.In the West, Christianity promises to provide for its converts with the Land of Ultimate Bliss in an afterlife while Buddhism in China deems that lusts are the source of all sufferings, which well explain why westerns prefer to seek the unknown in the world with an undulating mind while Chinese stick to the known calmly.In ethics, China mainly stresses the importance of the country, nationality, religion and family.They have strong home-values, advocating "not go far away while parents home" and "the falling leaves settle on the roots".In Chinese mind and behavior, clan has a central position whose notion lies in pursuing the perfect sense of virtues and prudence.On the contrary, westerners regard individual as the center, not restricted to one pattern, and make one's home wherever one is.They emphasize children should separate from parents and live an independent life through honorable self-struggle and prefer to speak out personal opinions as well.Obviously, social life and individual personality all have pluralistic characteristics.

Mode of Aesthetic Values
In Chinese traditional artistic style, symbolization, as a basic feature, replaces the true feeling with vivid imagination.This kind of style is good at expressing condensed emotion with abstract lines and rhythm which reflected its high abstractness and generality.But for westerners, who are inclined to simulate originals, they would focus on realistic writing or painting and require articles of strict space and time until true sense of them is obviously noticed.Therefore, we can sum up the difference of the aesthetic values between two sides: China emphasizes the direct comprehension of the profound mood of art work and the unity of beauty and goodwill whereas the West stresses the systematic analysis on an object and the unity of beauty and reality.Take the difference of Chinese-western gardens as an example: The supreme state of Chinese garden art is "harmony between man and nature".So it is particular about natural elements of an art article without any trace of the artificial.Since the ancient times, Chinese have always regarded the garden as a poem or a painting rather than a simple civil engineering.The garden skillfully melts poetry and paintings into the whole, which not only adds the natural beauty of the garden, but also the intrinsic beauty --more like a gentle woman's personality.To think pine and cypress life-prolonging, lotus clean, bamboo modest, rock faithful-all these are linked with human emotions.Thus, the shadow of bamboo and flower, the sound of wind and rain, the light of sun and moon, the flagrance of tea and flower-can evoke abundant association with human emotion, which forms the unique style of Chinese classical garden art.To a larger extent, the western garden is a manifestation of the human conquest of nature as well as their transformation of it.In their gardens, you'll find a manual cut with the dissemination of another natural beauty--an idealized beauty whose appearance is so straightforward and evident that there is no need to try to fathom for its immediate relish.It is easy to find that westerners pay more attention to the full play of personality and its perfect combination with one's own idea.Instead of adhering rigidly to small matters overly, they make the garden publicized with generosity.Sometimes, their garden gives a most incongruous feeling with the surroundings.When someone is filled with such feeling, he may experience the contradiction and conflict that indeed make people inspired.As for our oriental landscape which explores the harmony between human and scene or among scenes themselves, it is too hard to display "personality".Many bold innovations are all difficult to be realized just because of the fear for undermining the harmony.With harmony, our garden turns out to be a little small-minded while it also brings you to a mind-state of peace and serenity, so the Chinese garden is a good place to cultivate oneself through meditation, like the Land of Peach Blossoms.

Levels of the Western Tourists' Needs
According to the "hierarchy of needs theory" which Abraham.Harold.Maslow, a famous psychologist of USA put forward, individual needs can be divided from low to high into 5 parts: physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness & love needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs.We should meet the needs of a higher level in the context of the realization of lower-lever needs.The relations among the five levels are described in Figure 2. In the West, with the stability of social welfare and security and the high-speed improvement of social civilization level, westerners' need-levels are generally improving and impelling the rapid development of the independent tourism.Overall, there are two types of western FITs traveling in China: One type is the group in the upper circles with certain social status and higher income.Instead of joining the travel group unwillingly, they are glad to live in the luxury hotel and ask for guides independently.By contrast, the other type is mostly made of young students with low income.They are visiting the world with backpacks, reflecting the frugal principle everywhere.They don't need the service of travel agency either--line up for tickets instead of employing luxurious sedans in the tourism city, squeeze into the crowded bus, take the ordinary hardseat train, live in the budget hotel, eat the snack of roadside or even simply buy a bicycle to travel at the time of their arrival.For most of them, what they need is not luxury or comfort, but thrift and convenience.No matter which type of tourists as they are, on the whole, modern western tourists who spend money and time living an unusual life mainly seek compensation and liberation from daily strains by doing restricted things in daily life.Just as Freud's famous saying: " Perhaps whether we have already noticed or not yet: what makes us feel ashamed of is no more than the incapability to display ourselves; what makes us feel proud and happy is no more than to think, say, and do things that we prefer."Modern western tourists don't want to dash out of a besieged city and jump into the encirclement of group-travels.In western nationalities, most people are brave and rich in adventurous spirit.They often seek destination and the way of traveling with evident personal preference.With the unfettered mind, they've tried the best to find an opportunity to express, highlight, enrich, and improve themselves.

Sustainability of Western Tourists' Economic Burden
Thomas Cook, a pioneer, put his great impact on tourism.Along with the Industrial Revolution, more and more westerners began to be able to afford the travel expenses.Westerners' overall income and level of consumption go beyond the average level in the world greatly nowadays, far exceeding those of developing and undeveloped countries.People's thereupon purchasing power is steadily enhanced.As in the past, travel agencies providing quality-services with low price are tourists' first-selection.But with the improvement of the living level and the lightening of economic burden, their concern for price factor is less while concern for tours inclining to one's personality more.Individualized choices, flexible itinerary and convenient shopping have satisfied the psychological needs of western FITs to a greater extent.

Dependence on Modern Science and Technology for Western Tourists
"Science" and "technology" are the key words in today's modern society.Constant improvement of modern communications and transportation, and the perfection of management and service have strengthened tourists' sense of convenience and dependence on the modern means.In the West, advanced travel facilities as well as qualified service offer strong material-guarantee for FITs--for example, the transportation departments like railway or sea, implement network-manipulation to sell tickets; the convenience of communications also enable people to make full use of net resources for information-inquiry; handle problems concerning eating, accommodation, traffic, post, shopping and entertainment during the tour.Besides, improved means of transportation also offer the safety of travels.
In USA, besides plane and coach as common traffic tools, there are some special lines for city tourism.If you're ready to travel by plane and check information about flights, prices, etc, the airline will make very detailed answers to them through the net in advance.Friday is a busy day for tourism and the airline often seek the opinion of some passengers whether they would transfer the predetermined flight to another.If someone agrees to do in this way, the airline will reward him with a free round-ticket.With it, he can take a trip to any city of the whole America at any time but once.Therefore, this kind of preferential service has promoted the development of the independent tourism to a certain extent, reminding people of the internet's advantages and their dependence on modern science and technology as well.

Maturity of the Western Tourists' Psychological Mechanism
With the accumulation of experience and maturity of psychological mechanism, tourists are more and more self-confident to carry the ability of remote travel alone.They no longer consider the travel dangerous, but regard it as an integral part of daily life for the physical and psychological conditioning, strength-rehabilitation, and experience-growth as well.On the premise of stable society and strong economic power, the development of western tourism advances by leaps and bounds.It's particularly for USA whose tourism nowadays is leading in the world.Thus, when tourists choose their destination or the way of traveling, they will stress more to one's selectivity and independence, which well show the tourist' gradual awareness of the importance of self-reliance.In addition, as the information industry develops quickly, there is greater accessibility to all kinds of travel knowledge.Then people's dependence on the travel agency or the travel intermediary is weakened step by step with accumulation of knowledge and enriching of travel experience.Out of the strengthened consciousness of independence and participation day by day, more and more people would like to go in company, choose the destination and travel pattern, visit scenic spots as well as join in other travel activities by themselves.In western brilliant tourism history of centuries, it's just westerners' peculiar character of independence and self-reliance that nourish groups of mature FITs in general.

Diversity of Western Tourists' Consumption Personality
Investigating Chinese consumption idea under the influence of traditional introverted culture, Chinese people live within their income with a strong consciousness of deposit.It's quite different from the western families who take career or consumption as the center.Western tourists with extroverted character have more initiative, enthusiasm and are fearless of hardships.With the tides of tourism development in the West during the short century, ideas of western travel-consumers has guided other travel-consumers in the rest of the world.Western tourists don't merely regard the travel as one experience of relish or admiration; what's more, they tend to choose the best way of the independent tour to reflect their life-quality, personality traits and preference to take part in.In this way, some projects such as "ecotourism", "folklore tourism", "adventure tourism" pop up quietly and are accepted by travel-consumers favorably.But the appeal of traditional grouptravel with a single pattern drops to some extent, for the old standards make the travel-mode hard to satisfy their individual demand.Although travel agencies have lots of advantages in the pattern of price-quotation and group-organizing, their disadvantages are unavoidable objectively--rigid way of price-quotation, limited routines and items, restricted freedom of activity; With the aim of economic profits, some travel agencies even arrange the travel-items so centralized that tourists only have the chance to glance at the scenery and hurry on with less pleasure.Thus, more and more visitors lose their interest in the traditional way of price-quotation for sure.

Impacts of the Western FITs' Psychology on Chinese Tourism Management
Economic development makes the independent tour--a product come out in a higher, newer phase of tourism development, become the inexorable trend.In the wake of the development of market economy and maturity of WTO mechanism after Chinese Reform and Opening-up, a large number of western tourists are flooding into the domestic market.It has an enormous impact on the management of our tourist industry."Concrete analysis for concrete problems" based only on the fully-understanding of the psychological characteristics of western FITs can better formulate plans for FIT reception and tourism management which are good for the development of our tourism economy.Although the independent tourism highlights its individuality and arbitrariness, in fact, many FITs still draw support from the travel agencies or other intermediaries.For example, the travel agency can still provide the necessary services for tourists though its role of function has been changed--from group-organizing, reception to information-provision as an intermediary, such as booking rooms for visitors, recommending scenic spots, offering information, etc.So, the input of western FITs makes the travel agencies and service intermediaries have to adopt the corresponding management tactics, resources, information and large-scale production advantage of more effective use, assisting the FITs with cheap price, high-quality service as well as a better travel experience.

Impact on the Respective Management Style of Tourism Departments
The western independent tourism is developing rapidly.The former management style aimed mainly at group-travels seems unsuitable to the new trend any more and a series of changes are just around the corner.Under the prerequisite of meeting western visitors' psychological needs, the travel agency or tourist service intermediary of our country can change its own management style--carry on individual tourism business chain; establish specialized individual tourism reception department; realize the standardization of individual tourism; follow the trail of FIT market, making FIT business truly up to a certain height as main work.Meanwhile, tourism departments continue improving the reception facilities of the independent tour, strength the function of travel information as well--such as enhancing the service combination of travel agencies and hotels, set up and perfect the social information-service network.The development of Shanghai Spring and Autumn International, as a top trademark among all the travel agencies in China, first advocates the slogan as "one person can travel the world; FITs can travel the world as well", and its change and perfection of the management style provide western FITs with much comfort and convenience.

Impact on the Interdepartmental Communication and Cooperation
After China's entry into WTO, the travels between China and the West are very frequent.The income of national economy in China has been promoted by the introduction of foreign capitals.Over the past decade, the widespread of the independent tourism has made Chinese FIT market focused by the whole world.In order to attract more western visitors to come in China with perfect reception services, tourism departments should communicate with each other with a common aim of improving service quality and management level.A good product should be a combination of energy from all travel sectors, so the interdepartmental cooperation among travel agencies, hotels and traffic sectors is destined to be one of the tactics to develop FIT tourism rapidly--the booking network can be applied: Through network, you can find out the booking information of traffic sectors or hotels for your pre-decided tour.At the same time, the network can otherwise receive the inquiry or booking orders from tourists, store resource information and plan travel routes in place of manual work according to FITs' various needs.

Impact on the Product Marketing Strategy
Western FITs are often mature tourists.For them, the demand of travel is to express their life-preference, individual character and cast off the chains of daily life.On the basis of convenience and safety they've got, tourists want to seize the travel chance to enrich and improve themselves with a mature mind.First of all, in order to attract more western FITs and open up a wider FIT market, the tourism organization may start travels of different topics.For example, the Snow Festival of Harbin, regarding ice lantern exhibition as the centre, introduces lots of programs like snow art, snow entertainment, snow culture, snow sports, and snow competition which make tourists fully realize the charm of the snow travel without the limitation of gathering time.Secondly, it is essential to supply printed publicity materials of tourism in a detailed way, which can satisfy FITs' demand for individualism.All these materials--including traveling route manuals, catalogue sets, guide books, price tables, various single-page publicity articles, publicity brochures as well as envelopes, calendars, postcards of other uses.They mainly introduce the basic knowledge concerning culture, geography, natural resources, customs, scenery, traffic, accommodation, shopping and price listing, in order to make people increase their understanding, dispel misgivings and add fun to their travels.Besides, there are also excellent pictures and texts in the cheap travel printed matters with a great function for long-keeping and instant information-support, which plays an important role in the travel promotion.Moreover, the full utilization of newspapers, television, radio and other mass media, together with the active participation in the advertising work for tourism fairs, tourism exhibitions, have increased their influence over the frequency and intensity of information wanted by FITs.In publicity process, for dispelling some inconvenience caused by language obstacles, bear in mind the use of both languages--Chinese and English.

Focal Services according to Western Tourists' Mode of Thinking
Flexibility and individuality of the independent tourism don't get rid of the necessity of guide service.If meeting visitors' requirement in some scenic spots, we can still offer corresponding guide service.For different travel psychology is unavoidable under different cultural and educational background between western and Chinese FITs, the guide service should be in progress flexibly according to different people, different time and different places.To be an excellent guide, one should understand that westerners' mode of thinking is quite different from that of people in China.The Chinese mode of thinking is often from abstract to concrete, great to small, far to near, while westerners' mode is on the contrary.The different way of addressing a mail can be took as an example: the western order of addressing is from name, work-unit, street-number, street-name to district, city, state, which forms the synthetic relation from individual to the whole; Chinese addressing order is the opposite, which highlights the analytic relation from the whole to individual.As a result, tour guides should figure out more examples or data when together with western tourists.It could be better for tourists to make conclusion themselves, making sure there are no vague theory or arbitrary conclusion delivered by guides to produce misunderstanding.

Guide Services according to Western Tourists' Cultural Habit and Personality Style
As every country and nation has its own traditional culture and custom, guides' explanation should relate to things familiar to travelers in order to satisfy their demands.If western visitors are relatively unfamiliar with Chinese culture, experienced guides would often relate love tragedy of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, or White Wife and Xu Xian, with that of Remeo and Juliet in the West, giving visitors a good sense of cordiality and accessibility.In addition, different personality tendencies and individual psychological characteristics, with background of cultures and customs, are reflected by different characters, interests and hobbies.For example, faced with westerners who are extroverted, open, free and rich in sense of humor, guides can make their language more humorous for catering to visitors' habit.Certainly, everything must go around the principle of "degree" and detailed courtesy of guide service should be stressed, not losing the traditional demeanor of our country.

Respect for Western Tourists' Aesthetic Habits
As a guide, one should show respect for visitors' aesthetic habits because their aesthetic consciousness and activities are in company with the society, times, nationality and personal selectivity.What the guide think truly beautiful is not necessarily suitable for the visitors' aesthetic view, and it's the same with the contrary.eg."MaZha" is a folding stool made of canvas and iron-wood frame in Northern China.While the guide hasn't realized at all the charm of MaZha, westerners have held it as a beauty that is just the embodiment of "Chinese ancient culture and national wisdom".Though western culture and science are flouring, it is still the first time to see such an exquisite invention with its convenience for carrying.So, guides should adjust to changed conditions and do a good job for the guide service in a flexible way.They can help foreign tourists to understand Chinese aesthetic view because a foreigner with his native aesthetic view has much difficulty in understanding the Chinese aesthetic standards for landscape, let alone the admiration of the scenery itself.Meanwhile, guides can not impose their own aesthetic concepts on others for certain, and have responsibility of cultivating foreigners' understanding capacity for Chinese aesthetic psychology on the premise that visitors can't admire the view just for lack of understanding.

Impact on the Tourism Education
Tourism education is an activity to popularize knowledge through a variety of school educations.It has been considered in the context of the worldwide prevalence of tourism.In the western developed countries, it was from the 1950s to 1960s that began the popular group-travelers.Aolianna.Puen ever said that the rising of modern tourism is together with the flying of jet planes.Then there was a popular view: tourism development and economic development are closely linked; as a rising industry, tourism has a very optimistic future.China, a developing country, unexceptionally develops its tourism with great efforts promoted by the profit motivation of developing economy and creating foreign exchanges.By the 20 th century, the tourism of our country entered the world tourism powers' ranks, so the tourism education is also following the developing trend of tourism at full speed with more interaction with other countries.In order to keep pace with the world tourism market, our tourism education is moving towards the standardization gradually and brings up a large group of comprehensive talents who are adapting to the trend.Our tourism departments at all levels, enterprises, tourism universities and colleges, to some degree, have formed partnership with the institutions of tourism education in developed parts of the world, which accelerates our steps for tourism education and shortens the gap between China and the developed world.Nowadays, our tourism education has entered the new stage of rapid development.
In the course of development over the past two decades, Chinese tourism has made remarkable achievements--from "traditional reception room " to "the new point of national economic growth"; From sightseeing tourism to multi-functional tourism composed of sightseeing, vacation, business, exhibition, research; from traditional group-travels to modern independent tours, etc.According to the prediction of WTO (World Tourism Organization),China will have become the world's largest reception country of tourism and the fourth departure country of tourism by 2020.Sustained rapid growth of tourism in China, relying on the improvement of overall level of education in tourism, also vigorously promotes the rapid development of tourism education.In recent years, the high immigration number of western independent tourists and the continu-ous inflow of foreign exchange are strong promoters for the development of tourism economy.However, due to the disparities of geographical environment, lifestyle, mode of production, behavior, way of association, historical background, political system, economic system, custom, religious belief, language, philosophical concept, ethical concept, aesthetic concept, space concept, psychological characteristic and way of expression, the modes of thinking and behaving are quite different between Chinese FITs and western FITs--Chinese prefer humanism, ethics while westerners prefer nature and science; Chinese stress comprehension, consciousness and intention while westerners stress rationality, logic and authentic proof; Chinese are quiet, introverted, and conservative while westerners are active, extroverted and open; Chinese admire similarity, stability and harmony while westerners admire dissimilarity, change and competence, etc.The elimination of cultural barriers requires education which gives a hand to the development of the independent tourism in our market.With it, excellent reception way and management mode could come true, which reflects a new era of tourism in China.Nowadays, the number of national higher tourism institutions, universities and colleges is so large that a system of tourism education made of training, vocational, professional, undergraduate, master's and doctoral levels has been formed completely.The foreign-language courses in the system such as Tour English, Foreign Tourism Management, etc, are quite innovative and contemporary, which exactly meet the features of modern tourism and the personnel needs of the tourism market.As time goes by, education and tourism support each other with confident steps stretching to future.

Conclusion
In a word, the development of tourism economy, global implementation of the WTO policy and the maturity of tourists' psychological mechanism have made the inflow of western FITs an irresistible trend during the development course of Chinese tourism.The tourist industry should apply scientific skills to the improvement of management mechanism.Faced with western FITs--a special but popular group, the tourist industry should make the best use of basic psychological principles to study the psychological characteristics of western FITs, explore the psychological tactics during reception, and perfect the corresponding management ways in general.The butterfly effect of the western independent tour has made our country involved.Only conscientious research and constant summary can speed up the exploitation of domestic FIT market and the innovation of effective management mode, which right adapt to the developing trend of global tourism market and domestic tourism economy.