As traditional cultural destination, ancient villages have been paid more attention for a swift and violent development.
But the achievements about the tourism study of the ancient villages are rare and its theory in fact fall behind with the practice. Taking the world cultural heritage—Xidi Village and Hongcun Village—as an example, on the basis of a considerable on-the-spot survey, this paper summarizes the
temporal characteristics of tourist flows to ancient villages as follows: (1) tourist flows increase rapidly; (2) seasonal differences of tourist flows are obvious with the shape of "3-peak-3-valley"; (3) tourist flow distribution is irregular and shaped as slanting "Z" within a week generally, while at peak weeks shaped as "blowout"; (4) tourist flows is shaped as "double-peak" within one day and temporal distribution of tourist flows is concentrated. Furthermore, the authors also discuss the
influential factors, such as events, social factors, natural environmental factors, radiating effect of Mt. Huangshan, and management systems. Meanwhile, a preliminary comparison between ancient villages and other kinds of destinations has been brought up. At last the authors expound the impacts coming from the increasing tourist flows. The study contributes to promoting the thorough research on the tourism of ancient villages and providing scientific base of sustainable development of it.