The development strategy of cultural tourism integration in characteristic towns based on SWOT-AHP

The development of characteristic towns plays a crucial role in promoting rural revitalization, advancing China’s new urbanization efforts, and increasing farmers’ incomes. The integration of culture and tourism can enhance the appeal of tourist destinations while preserving local culture, mitigating the impact of tourism seasonality, and fostering the high-quality, sustainable development of the tourism industry. This study analyzes the key factors influencing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of cultural and tourism integration in the characteristic town of Conghua, Guangzhou. By applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the study calculates the weights of each influencing factor. Additionally, through a questionnaire survey, the strength values of these factors are derived, and the overall factor strengths are computed based on both the weights and strength values. A countermeasure quadrilateral is then constructed to determine the optimal development strategy for cultural and tourism integration in the town. The results indicate that the total intensity of opportunities is 1.493, the total intensity of advantages is 1.274, the total intensity of disadvantages is −0.292, and the total intensity of threats is −0.288. The conclusion shows that the integration of culture and tourism in small towns with Chinese characteristics should adopt the development strategy of quality growth.