Abstract: Inbound tourism is a key component of China's modern tourism industry system. Correctly understanding the fluctuation law of inbound tourism cycle is of great significance to accurately grasp the development trend of inbound tourism in China, formulate reasonable industrial development policies, and promote the stable and rapid growth of the inbound tourism market. This paper employs HP filter and Markov regime switching model to measure the fluctuation and analyze the periodic changes of China's inbound tourism cycle since the reform and opening up. The results show that during the study period, China's inbound tourism displays the development trend of rising total volume but fluctuating growth rate, that there are three regional states of low-speed growth, medium speed growth and high speed growth in the speed increase dynamic changing process, and that stronger stability and sustainability can be seen in the“low-speed growth regime”and the “high-speed growth regime”. The growth rate of inbound tourist arrivals in China has periodic reciprocating changes between the“low-speed growth regime”, the“medium-speed growth regime”and the “high-speed growth regime”, and the“high-speed growth regime”and the“low-speed growth regime”will achieve“soft landing”and“stable expansion”through the“medium-speed growth regime”. From the perspective of development trend, China's inbound tourism has been in a low-speed contraction state since 2005, and it is more likely to continue to maintain a low-speed promotion in the future. Finally, the corresponding development policies are proposed to reverse the sluggish inbound tourism market and promote the recovery of China's inbound tourism industry.

Key words: inbound tourism, cycle fluctuation, phased changes, HP filter, Markov regime switching model