The Department of Tourism Management is an independent secondary-level unit at the college level of South China University of Technology, established in 2004. It is one of the earliest departments in the university to offer international joint training programs and has achieved outstanding results in cultivating innovative talents. Both the undergraduate majors of Tourism Management and Exhibition Economics and Management have been approved as national first-class model undergraduate construction points. In the 2022 academic evaluation by the Soft Science Research Institute, these two majors ranked 5th and 3rd nationwide, respectively. In 2022, the Tourism Management major passed the Tourism Education Quality Certification by the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

Our department currently possesses a comprehensive full-time talent cultivation system spanning undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels, being the first in the country to establish doctoral programs in event studies, master's programs in digital cultural tourism and exhibition engineering management, and master's programs in rural revitalization studies. We now operate several research platforms, including the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Digital Rural and Cultural Tourism Sustainable Development, the Guangzhou Urban-Rural Integration Development Research Institute (Guangzhou Think Tank), the Guangdong Tourism Strategy and Policy Research Center, the Guangdong Provincial Engineering Technology Research Center for Rural Revitalization and Tourism Big Data, and the Guangzhou Cultural and Tourism Integration Development Research Base.

Over the past five years, more than 60 research projects have been undertaken, including those funded by the National Natural Science Foundation and the National Social Science Foundation. Over 100 high-quality academic papers have been published in prestigious domestic and international journals such as *Tourism Journal*, *Acta Geographica Sinica*, and *International Journal of Tourism Research*. The institution actively serves national strategic priorities like the Greater Bay Area development, rural revitalization, digital China, and cultural strength building. It emphasizes strengthening industry-academia-research collaboration by establishing practical teaching or research bases with renowned domestic and international tourism and exhibition enterprises. Over 50 policy advisory reports have been adopted by national, provincial, and municipal governments as well as enterprises, generating extensive and profound social impact. Additionally, it has cultivated a group of outstanding talents for Guangdong and the nation, becoming a key hub in South China that integrates teaching, research, think tank functions, and social services.