A Research Into Tourism Carrying Capacity Of Theme Park

Tourism capacity, as an important content of the study of tourism sustainable development, has been appreciated at home and abroad and gotten fruitful achievements. In recent years, theme parks has turned to be a hot zone in the field of tourism research in china. And with the great development, it will receive more scholars'concern. As a global industry, theme parks is developing into a vital new force attracting the attention of the world at an unprecedented speed. With an increasing number of theme parks and the intensification of competition, it will be an irresistible general trend that more delicatamente way of capacity management will be used in theme parks. This paper chose tourism capacity of theme parks as the study object, and inquired into capacity influence mechanism, capacity calculation, loadbearing character, and capacity management of theme parks. On the one hand, it will enrich and perfect the theories of tourism science, tourism geography and tourism capacity; on the other hand, it can provide scientific basis and instructional suggestions to theme parks for their scientific decisions on capacity design, capacity management, queuing management, tourist mangement, product and route design, market development, etc.According to project operation conditions, tourists'waiting time, tourists'satisfaction, the time tourists in and out of the park, visitors'visiting routes, and so on, this paper conducted an investigation of eight months, and won a total of 1959 effective questionnaires in golden holidays, weekdays and weekends, with a case study of Fantawild Adventure theme park. On the basis of the classification and summary of the researches on the measurement and management of tourism carrying capacity, and the capacity and queuing management of theme parks home and abroad, this paper explored capacity influence mechanism, capacity calculation, loadbearing characteristics and capacity management of theme parks in depth, by using multiple theoretical and technical analysis methods, such as social statistical analysis, queuing theory, system dynamics, geographic information system and social network analysis.First, by using the tool of social statistical analysis and the principle of systematic dynamics, this paper illustrated capcacity influence machanism, explained the relationships among capacity relevant variables, constructed attendance influence system, project experience system, threthhold experience system and capacity influence system, and pointed out the main influence factors and control directions of the capacity of theme parks.Secondly, on the basis of queuing theory in operational research, the reasonable capacities of various attractions were calculated with parameters of the longest waiting time tourists can bear; the daily park capacity was confirmed according to the ratio of tourists'waiting time to their time spent in park; the annual park capacity was estimated according to the ratios of the number of days and tourists in midseason to those in a whole year; related capacity indicators were caculated according to the above results, and all the results were analysed.Thirdly, through the analysis of the characteristics of time and space distribution, capacity utilization of theme parks, this paper summarized the the primary influence factors of time demand, the rules of tourists behavior, the principles of the spatial distribution of projects and the characteristics of capacity utilization of projects, and proposed corresponding approaches for solving capacity problems.At last, based on the practice of capacity management home and abroad, the management ideas that three general orientations and six systems of capacity management were proposed; then the main matters of the capacity management of Fantawild Adventure in Wuhu were analyzed, and some concrete capacity management countermeasure were given.Innovations are mainly made in the following three aspects. (1)In research methods, system dynamics theory were used to analyse the capacity influence mechanism of theme parks; queuing theory, ECU measurement were used to make a measurement system of theme parks capacity and related indicators; GIS spatial analysis and social network analysis methods were used to analyse the characteristics of tourists space distribution and tourists flow in theme parks. (2) In research perspectives, capacity influence mechanism of theme parks were studied in the perspective of systematics; capacity measurement and management of theme parks were studied in the perspective of queuing; tourists behavior rules of theme parks were studied in the perspective of space; principle of the spatial distribution of projects were studied in the perspective of behavior. (3) In research contents, this paper illustrated the capacity influence machanism of theme parks, created the measurement of the capacity and relevant indices of theme parks, conclulded the law of time and space demand, tourists'choosing bahavior, the principle of space design and the character of capacity occupation for theme parks, illustated mechanism of capacity management of theme parks, and constructed the capacity management system which consisted of three directions and six subsystem.