A Study On Spatial Distribution Characteristics Of Overnight Tourists In Hainan Province

The study on the spatial distribution characteristics of tourists is a part of the study of the tourist flow, which is one of the core issues of the tourism geography research. Chinese scholars have researched on the spatial distribution of tourists’ source and destination of inbound or domestic tourists in different region scale, and have attained a great deal of achievements. But there is no study on the spatial distribution of overnight tourists in provincial region scale yet. Hainan, in the context of the international tourism island construction, urgently needs to grasp relative information of the spatial distribution characteristics of overnight tourists’source and destination.There are2innovations in this system:①It changes the quality of tourism flow index into the liquid of tourist flow index. The quality of tourism flow index is used to measure the level of a tourist destination’s tourism flow quality in a certain type and a certain scale to its upper region scale. While the liquid of tourist flow index is used to measure the level of different types of tourist flow liquids in the same region scale.②It concerns the temperature resources in Hainan’s tourism resources, by applying the Basic Gravity Model to build the Hainan Province’s overnight tourists’spatial potential model which includes the absolute differential dimension factor. The model can be used to quantitative analysis of the reasons of Hainan overnight tourists’spatial distribution characteristics.The paper uses the following methods to analysis the location, structure, range and the causes of the source spatial distribution of Hainan overnight tourists:the population of overnight tourists, its proportion and growth rates, the changed tourists flow liquid index, tourist geography concentrate index, the coefficient of tourist concentration, the radius of the gravitational field of tourist destination, the Spatial Use Curve of Tourist Flow, and the spatial potential model of Hainan overnight tourists which includes the absolute degree dimension factor. The results are as follows. The main tourist source region of Hainan overnight tourists is Asia, then Europe, North America, and Oceania. China is the largest tourists’source. Even though the domestic tourist flow liquid is lower than the inbound, it shows an increasing trend. The spatial distributions of the overnight tourists’sources show centralized. As an overnight tourist destination, Hainan’s attractive radius is about2300km, and as an inbound overnight destination, it is about5200km. The tour spatial use curves of Hainan inbound overnight tourists is extremely complex. The correlation of four factors (the urban population of overnight tourists’sources, the spatial distance, the absolute differential dimension, the per capita income of residents) and the number of overnight tourists from different sources in Hainan are9.646、-2.414、1.085、-0.028. Hence, it is suggested that Hainan Province should expand overnight tourists’ source with the following features, large urban population, close space distance, big difference in absolute dimensions and high GDP per capita. In order to develop high-end market, the Hainan Province should enhance the tourists’ reception level, improve tourism package implementation and change the inbound tourism reception conditions.The paper uses the following methods to analysis the location, structure, density and the causes of the destination spatial distribution of Hainan overnight tourists:the population of overnight tourists, its proportion and tourism size of primary city, tourist geography concentrate index and the coefficient of tourist concentration, density and density index, the location and the number of high-level tourist attractions. The results are as follows. The mainly visited cities/couties of Hainan by domestic overnight tourists are Sanya, Haikou, Wanning, Qionghai and Lingshui. The mainly visited cities/couties of Hainan by inbound overnight tourists are Sanya, Haikou, Wanning and Qionghai. Sanya is the primary city in Hainan, and its tourism size of primary city shows upward trend. The destination spatial distribution of the inbound overnight tourists is highly centralized, and the concentration value is greater than the domestic’s. The results of the density and density index show that the development situation of Hainan tourism industry is totally good, but the development between cities and counties are unbalanced. The locations and the number of the high-level tourist attractions affect the tourist routes, which influence the overnight tourists’ number of the cities/couties reception. Hence, the cities/couties in Hainan should develop the tourism resources deeply to construct the high-level tourist attractions, and develop the tourist routes together with the travel agencies.The results of the study provide theoretical and methodological supports to the target markets selection and the tourism products development of Hainan.