Research Towards The Optimization Of The Tourism Functional Area Planning Pattern

After 20-year tourism planning practices, it is significant for China to summarize the past experiences and optimize the present planning patterns. Focusing on the tourism functional area planning-subsystem of tourism planning system, the objectives of the study are to optimize systematically the phases of tourism functional area planning then suggest innovatively an optimized planning pattern design, based on the summary of 10-year tourism functional area planning practices and studies and the researcher's 3-year regional tourism planning experiences. The research methodologies include literature study, qualitative methods, comparative case study, empirical study and synthetical study.The content of the paper can be divided into 5 chapters. Chapter 1 (preface) presents the background, the purpose and significance, the research methodologies, and the logical structure of this research, and then discusses some keywords related to the topic. In chapter 2 (summary of practice and theory), the researcher summarizes the related theoretical studies in the last 10 years in China focusing on the tourism spatial layout and the tourism item design. The summary of practices includes 2 parts: the case study of over 40 regional tourism planning practices by different tourism planning organizations/institutions/corporations (both domestic and abroad); the summary of 10 tourism planning projects in which the author has participated. In order to realize the research objectives, chapter3 (design of the tourism functional area planning pattern optimization) adopts systematical methods: 1) analyzing the present tourism functional planning pattern; 2) designing the logical procedure of tourism functional area planning; 3) optimizing different aspects of the whole procedure; 4) seeking the related conditions for the optimized planning pattern through the processes of optimization; 5) designing the optional-optimized-planning-pattern based on the extent of the above conditions' been satisfied. In chapter 4 (case study), the researcher makes Anqing city of Anhui province as a case to examine the design of the optional-optimized-planning-pattern. In the last chapter (conclusion), the author concludes the whole research, puts forward 2 questions as further study targets, and forecasts the implementations of the virtual reality (VR) and the customer relationship management (CRM) in the tourism (functional area) planning practices in the coming years.The innovations of this research might include: 1) the first attempt of insightful and empirical study on the tourism functional area planning in China; 2) the adoption of systematical methods in the optimization of the tourism functional area planning pattern; 3) the first summary of 4 major tourism functional planning patterns and suggestion of the functional area division by time & space dimension. To sum up, the objectives of the study have been addressed in general. As the research towards the tourism (functional area) planning is characterized in its application attributes, with the accelerating development of the information technologies and the drastic transformation the modern tourism conceptions in the 21st century, there is a high call for the holistic examination upon the optimization of the tourism functional area planning pattern design and the further analysis of the alteration of this design according to the change of the related conditions.