Trip, China And USA Market Characteristics And Its Developments

The number of outbound tourists of United States is ranked third behind Germany and the United Kingdom and its tourism expenditure is ranked first, which plays a momentous role in the world tourist market. What’s more, it is also the largest long-distance country of origin and one of the top four countries of origin in China, which plays an important role in China inbound tourist market. Since the adoption of reform and opening-up, the volume of U.S. visiting-China market presents an upward trend as a whole. However, since hitting the mark of one million visitors, its absolute growth increment and annual growth rate increases very slightly. Therefore, it is significant to expand its volume and improve its growth rate for Chinese inbound tourist market.The review of related researches is described firstly. Then this study investigates the features of U.S. outbound tourist market from the aspects of market volume, seasonal distribution, shares in different regions and countries, shares in China and the other Asian countries. At the same time, the paper analyzes the characteristics on historical development, demographic structure and tourist behavior of U.S. visiting-China market and the characteristics on geographical distribution, spatial transference and network structure of U.S. visiting-China tourist flows. At last, the countermeasures of expanding U.S. visiting-China market are put forward, which provides the theoretical foundation for government carrying out marketing, tourism transportation planning, tourism cooperation and so on.The conclusions of the research are:①The features of U.S. outbound tourist market:its market volume is large and increasing steadily, however, it is easily affected by domestic and international crisis. Its peak seasons appear in March, June, July and December and its off seasons are February, April, October and November. Compared with Mexico, Canada and European countries, Asian countries are not main destinations of American tourists, but their market shares are rising year by year. Chinese mainland, Japan, Hong Kong, Republic of Korea and Taiwan are their main destinations in Asia. The shares of these regions and countries are gradually imbalance. The monopoly position of Japan begins to be shaken by Chinese mainland, but Japan is still the biggest rival for Chinese mainland.②The characteristics of U.S. visiting-China market:it retreats to "Taurus market" from "Star market" in2006, which means that its market share is large, but its growth rate is lower than the average. Its rules of seasonal distribution are different from U.S. outbound tourist market. Its peak seasons appear in March, June and October and its off seasons are February, August and December. American tourists obtain the tourism information by website and friends. Many of them enter China from Beijing and Shanghai with their family and friends. Their main tourism purpose is sightseeing and most of them are independent tourists. They always stay for a long time. Communication is the biggest obstacle and distance is the bigger obstacle in their travel.③The distribution of U.S. visiting-China tourist flows is in a wide range and centralizes in Yangtze River delta, Pearl River delta, Bohai rim, Southwest region, especially in Yangtze River Delta. It mainly flows to the hot tourist destinations, such as Beijing, Xi’an, Guilin, Hangzhou and so on. These city pairs, such as Beijing-Xi’an, Nanjing-Hangzhou, Guilin-Beijing, are more popular than others. The shares of these city pairs, such as Xi’an-Chengdu, Beijing-Guangzhou, Beijing-Chengdu, are lower than others. And these tourist routes, such as Beijing-Nanjing-Hangzhou-Suzhou-Shanghai, Beijing-Suzhou-Hangzhou-Shanghai, Beijing-Xi’an-Guilin-Shanghai-Beijing, Beijing-Xi’an-Suzhou-Shanghai, Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou-Guilin-Beijing, are the most popular with visitors.④The network of U.S. visiting-China tourist flows, with low density, is a "core-periphery" network, which includes11core members and44periphery members. The core members play the different roles in the network, such as diffusion center, gather center and transfer center and control the periphery members. What’s more, there are10cliques in the network. The members are few in the cliques. The three hubs, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, appear in the cliques frequently.⑤Some countermeasures are put forward to expand the U.S. visiting-China market from the aspects of marketing, international competition and cooperation, regional cooperation, promotion the professional abilities of service staff, identification system construction and air transportation planning.Innovative points of this study are:①The paper analyzes the characteristics of U.S. visiting-China market in the perspective of U.S. outbound tourist market and Chinese inbound tourist market.②By social network analysis, the study analyzes the structure features of U.S. visiting-China tourist flows network.③Some countermeasures of expansion the U.S. visiting-China market are put forward from the perspective of macro and overall connection.