Research on the high-quality development of border tourism in Southwest China from a life cycle perspective

Border tourism in the Southwest region serves as a crucial window for China's opening-up poli-cy and a key industry for border development and prosperity. Its high-quality development holds significant strategic importance for international economic and trade cooperation, re-gional coordinated development, and border prosperity and stability. This paper examines the evolution of border tourism policies in the Southwest region, key events, and trends in data such as the annual growth rate of border tourism visitors from 2000 to 2023 and the number of overnight international visitors. Based on the life cycle theory, the development process is di-vided into five stages. It also analyzes the current state of border tourism development in the Southwest region, identifying three key challenges: lagging smart service systems, mismatches between resource availability and market demand, and incomplete mechanisms for cross-border tourism cooperation and coordinated development. The study is grounded in the strategic mission of serving the country's peripheral diplomacy, optimizing the tourism devel-opment landscape, and promoting the “Prosperous Border Areas and Enriched People” initiative. It delves into practical pathways across three dimensions: continuously optimizing market de-mand alignment, continuously improving the tourism supply system, and continuously strengthening regional tourism cooperation, to drive high-quality development of border tour-ism in the Southwest region.