Analysis of Cognitive Misalignment in the Tourism Sector

On November 2, 2026, Dong Guanzhi, deputy dean of the Tourism Planning and Design Research Institute at Jinan University, wrote in Pinchain Tourism that the most core contradiction in the current tourism industry is not the imbalance between supply and demand and regulatory constraints, but an all-round cognitive misalignment at the levels of statistical identification, beneficiary entities, development philosophy and other aspects. He proposed that livelihood expenditures and agriculture-related income that are not tourism in nature are classified as tourism investment and tourism revenue, causing data distortion; favorable policies and revenue identification focus only on traditional tourism enterprises, while individual merchants, local farmers and other entities that rely on tourism scenarios to increase income are excluded; overemphasizing traffic and public-welfare attributes while underestimating market rules is precisely the root of the "busy traffic but no wealth" dilemma. At present, this view is a scholar's analysis, and no response from relevant parties or policy adjustment has yet been seen.