Integrated Development of Tea and Tourism in Taishan Mountain Tea Valley in the Context of Rural Revitalization

In recent years, the integrated development of the tea and tourism has become an important way to promote the rural revitalization of Tai’an tea-producing areas, but the state of industrial upgrading still needs to be improved. In order to better integrate tea and tourism in Tea Valley, this paper uses questionnaire and SWOT analysis to study. It found the following problems: (i) 45.7% of tourists were interested in tea culture, but they know little about it, and the integration of tea culture and tea tourism products is low. (ii) 50.54% of the tourists were interested in the tea picking experience project and wanted to add the tea food experience item. (iii) The acceptance of 45.7% of tourists to scenic spots was 1-2 h, which shows that the quality of transportation service facilities and personnel needs to be improved. Combined with the SWOT analysis, it is found that the scenic spot is rich in resources, convenient transportation, profound cultural heritage, and good government policy support conditions, which is suitable for the SO strategy (growth development strategy), so the scenic spot relies on internal advantages and seizes external opportunities to develop the integration of tea and tourism. Based on the analysis results, it came up with the pertinent recommendations for the key problems: (i) The infrastructure service is not well established. It is suggested that scenic spots should increase investment, regularly train service personnel to improve their quality, and improve transportation services, accommodation, catering and public service hardware facilities. (ii) Tea tourism products are insufficient. It is suggested that tea tourism products should be innovatively designed and tea tourism experiential products and tourism commodities should be planned. (iii) Tea culture and tourism lack organic combination. It is recommended to deeply excavate tea culture, and take consideration of both spiritual and material aspects. The specific methods include building teahouses, Taishan Mountain (Mount Tai) tea culture throughout the whole process of tea production, development and processing, and AR tea culture experience hall can be built to make tourists feel tea culture from different perspectives. (iv) The publicity is insufficient. Strategies should be made in three aspects: improving the Internet media, taking into account the traditional media, and expanding the market based on the surrounding areas. (v) The tea industry chain is short. It is recommended to add four new industrial chain designs of "tea+accommodation, tea+catering, tea+Internet, tea+training", hoping to bring some inspiration and ideas to the managers of scenic spots.