The Spatial Structure Of The Urban Tourist Flows And Distribution

Tourist flow is the interaction form between the origins and destinations of tourists. Tourist flows, going from the origins to the destinations, feature the continual spatial congregate and expansion and combine the origins and the destinations. The volume of domestic tourism worldwide is estimated by the WTO (World Travel Organization) to be about ten times greater than international tourism. Despite the magnitude of this activity, little systematic research has been undertaken into domestic tourist flows. Whereas urban areas are not only the main origins of tourists but also the main destinations, this article, on the base of more than twenty thousands sample questionnaires on domestic tourism, analyzes the basic concepts of tourist flows, explores their action rules, probes into spatial distributing rules of tourist flows' origins in different cities and discloses spatial congregating and expanding rules, systems and models. Besides, the article suggests tourism development strategy in different regions with different scales, with an aim to construct the basic framework and spatial systems of regional tourist flows, find out their action rules, and provide theoretical contributions to tourism marketing, regional tourism planning and tourism development strategy.The article consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the concept of tourist flow and its influential factors, classifies the types of tourism flow, and outlines the general patterns of regional tourist flows after dissecting various patterns. Chapter 2 examines the action features of tourist flows from the perspectives of demology and motives of tourists, and provides the different consuming and sojourn rules of different tourist flows. Chapter 3, taking a province as a sample unit, analyzes thespatial evolution laws of Nanjing's domestic tourist flows in different periods and corresponded causes, and depicts the marketing directions and the focuses of destination cities with the method of Adod Index. Besides, this chapter ascertains the rules of spatial allocation of tourist origins in Nanjing, Suzhou and Xuzhou. The subsequent chapter explores the connotations and types of tourist flows' congregation and expansion, analyzes the spatial congregating and expanding curves of tourist flows in Suzhou and Xuzhou, and, with the method of geographical analysis, takes quantitative analyses of centers, axis and disperse degree of the tourist flows in Nanjing, Suzhou and Xuzhou, on the base of which discloses the driving systems and models of urban tourist flows' congregation and expansion. Based on spatial congregating and expanding rules of urban tourist flows, chapter 5 suggests the tourism cooperation system among urban areas, which is demonstrated by the study on Xuzhou city and Lianyungang city. Besides, this chapter, taking Nanjing urban circle for example, analyses tourism development strategy in urban circle, and, based on the study of tourist flow's market allocation and congregating, expanding rules of center cities in three urban circles, provides domestic urban tourism development strategy of Jiangsu province. Chapter 6 is the conclusion of the article.