Progress in Enclave Tourism Study of Overseas: A Literature Review

Abstract

In response to the “isolated island” phenomenon emerging from the development of tourist resorts in China, this paper reviews the study of enclave tourism overseas, which has similar features to the resort “island”. Based on the literatures related to enclave tourism from Tourism Management and Annals of Tourism Research, this paper reviews the study of enclave tourism from the following aspects: definition discussion, theories used, causation of enclaves, characteristics and impacts of enclave tourism. The understanding of the overseas researches on enclave tourism would provide instructions for the study on the problems of Chinese resorts, such as enclavity and “island effects”, and suggest measures for the sustainable development of resorts in China. This paper is divided into three sections. Section 1 briefly introduces the development of enclave tourism in developing countries and the outline of enclave tourism study. Section 2 elaborates on the contents of enclave tourism research and gives deep insights into the study on concepts, characteristics, causations and effects respectively, which is the key part of this paper; Section 3 concludes the review and proposes suggestions for the enclave tourism study in China.