As an emerging destination, China has been experiencing in recent years a very strong growth in regards to the international arrivals, including tourists from France. Many tour-operators in France have developped China as destination and have drawn up a number of products under various forms so that the French tourists have diverse ways to organize their trips to China. However, few studies have been dealt with the French's tourism in China, and what they are doing in this destination is still not clear yet. Hence, we try to focus on it through a study on the French tourists' touristic practices in China, which are embodied in three aspects such as touristic space visited and touristic activities practiced by them, as well as their choices of ways to organize the trips. According to our survey conducted in Yangshuo among the French tourists, it is mainly about an urban tourism and a cultural tourism due to the dominance of urban space and cultural activities in their visit in this country. Moreover, the French tourists enroll especially in organized trips which are assumed by the touristic mediators to get access to this destination. Some explanations are offered from the perspectives of Chinese alterity and the tourists' touristic capital so as to clarify how their choices were made regarding to the ways to organize their trips to China. This dissertation shows finally that the touristic capital plays an active role in the fulfillment of touristic projects through its influence on tourists' choice of ways to organize their trips.
The touristic practices of French tourists in China