Modeling And Simulating Tourism Spatial Organization

Building a spatial economic model for macro spatial structure of tourism industry with microeconomic foundation enables tourism professionals to explore the internal mechanism on the evolution of tourism spatial organization and provide theoretical guidance for formulating regional tourism strategy.Based on the theory of neo-economic geography(NEG) and the reality of multi-regional tourism geography, this research attempts to build an asymmetric monopolistic competition model by introducing a compensation function. The impact of fixed cost inputs, product differentiation and travel cost are all considered in this model, to reveal the salient contributing factors from microeconomic perspective.Furthermore, employing agent based modeling(ABM) technique,and using NetLogo software, a simulation on the evolution of tourism spatial organization in the regions served by the Shanghai-Kunming Railway during 22 years is conducted. Simulation results show that, tourism spatial organization of Shanghai-Kunming Railway Area had experienced remarkable evolution during the past 22 years, and five destination circles centering on Shanghai, Nanchang, Zhuzhou, Guiyang and Kunming have been identified; however, the organization of destination circles is not consecutive, and cities like Xinyu, Pingxiang, Loudi, Huaihua, Tongren, Qiandongnan, Liupanshui and Qujing are currently situated in less developed area of tourism spatial organization.This research also simulates the evolution of tourism spatial organization in Shanghai-Kunming Railway Area considered the impact of high speed railway construction. The simulation results show that, the construction of high speed railway presents great impact on the tourism spatial organization of short and medium distance area, namely from Shanghai to Huaihua; however, for the long distance destination area in Guizhou and Yunnan, tourism spatial organization changes little.The model and simulation indicate that the change of travel cost, like construction of airport and high speed railway, as well as product differentiation in destinations have exerted significant influence on the spatial organization of destination circles. Implications for policy and regional tourism strategy are fully discussed.