The Research On Tourism Competitiveness Of Small And Medieam-Sized Towns And Cities

The study of competitiveness as an economic theory was originated from the western countries in 1980s. It caters to the trend of systematization and globlization of the economic and the tide of informatization of economic study.as a result, this theory has been developed quickly and been applied widely. Our national tourism has been transformed from the traditional reception enterprise into a pillar industry which plays an important role in domestic economy. With the swift increase of the tourism investment, regional competition was getting more and more fierce. The big city's tourism industry has already had the strong competitive capability, while the small and medium-sized towns and cities still have many problems. However, these small and medium-sized towns and cities hold a pivotal status in our national tourism. There are few researches on tourism industry competitive capability concerning small and medium-sized towns and cities in domestic. This article is a new issue under the background mentioned above.This study aims at developing and improving the present applied theory system of this issue as well as exploring an evaluation method. By means of analyzing the situations and potential of nineteen small and medium-sized towns and cities, the author tries to find some practical problems and give some suggestions to enhance their competitiveness.The study mainly involves the theory of competitiveness, regional economics, industrial economics and tourism principles, etc. The research mainly adopts the factor analysis, cluster analysis, combined with theoretical analysis and empirical analysis, qualitative and quantitative analysis. An index system and an empirical indicator system of the competitiveness theory of small and medium-sized tourism towns and cities are established according to some related theories and the characteristics of these kinds of cities. In the empirical study, referring The Yearbook of China Tourism Statistics 2001 and the criteria to define small and medium-sized towns and cities as well as some previous cases, 19 medium-sized towns and cities has been chosen and analyzed by the software of SPSS on the factor analysis of their competitiveness. The data of the year 2000 and 2004 are selected, which were released from various public statistics and official websites.Both the advantages and disadvantages of these 19 cities in terms of their respective developments of tourism industry are reached by means of horizontal, vertical and relatively comprehensive analysis,then the cluster analysis is applied to make a classification according to their similarities. The result shows that the tourism competitiveness of these cities has greatly increased in 2004 than that in 2000, in which the most competitive ones are Suzhou and Guilin. These 19 cities can be divided into six major categories which are quite distinctive from each other, therefore, different developmental measures should be proposed consequently so as to enhance their own tourism competitiveness.Finally, strategies to promote the competitiveness of every category of cities have been suggested by selecting one city in each category as a case to be analyzed, taking the characteristics of various cities into account, and adopting the methods of SWOT as well as the theory of life cycle in tourist areas.Based on above analysis, the author comes to the following conclusions: developing tourism of small and medium-sized towns and cities should take the local resources, the environment and other factors into consideration. It is necessary to obey the development principles of the tourism industry, to create innovative models based on local conditions and the market, to make the scientific development planning, and to promote the scientific development of the tourism industry.