Comprehensive Evaluation Of The Spatial Disparity Of Urban Tourism Competitiveness In Fujian Province

With the continuous development of cities, the study of urban competitiveness has increasingly gained concern by academic circles. However, the study of urban tourism competitiveness is still at its preliminary stage, more empirical researches on the theory and method need to be carried out. Urban tourism competitiveness, which can reflect the differences in tourism development among various cities, has become nowadays the major issue and hotspot in urban tourism research. The comprehensive spatial evaluation should be considered as a key issue for the research of urban tourism competitiveness.Based on synthetic review of previous studies, this thesis utilizes the relevant knowledge of tourism, economics, etc to review and analyze the basic concepts such as urban competitiveness, tourism competitiveness and urban tourism competitiveness. According to the scientific, dynamic, comparable, overall stratified and sustainable principles,39 indicator were selected to construct a index system of urban tourism competitiveness, with which the tourism competitiveness of nine city areas in Fujian Province has been quantitatively analyzed in three aspects including competitive performance, competitive potential and environment supportive. In order to measure the spatial disparity of urban tourism competitiveness in different city areas of Fujian Province, the primary component analysis (PCA) was used as an important mathematical model for evaluation, then the study areas was classified into different types, and the map of Fujian Province has been finally digitalized based on the software of Mapinfo for plotting the spatial disparity map of urban tourism competitiveness in Fujian. Through analysis of the thematic map, some strategies for enhancing urban tourism competitiveness to promote sustainable urban development in Fujian Province were proposed.The spatial disparity of comprehensive urban tourism competitiveness is composed of different competitive factors possessing different spatial layout features. The assessing results indicate that the competitive performance, competitive potential, environment supportive and comprehensive competitive each has notably characteristic in space. Their spatial disparity is very apparent with the fast development in cities such as Fuzhou, Xiamen and Quanzhou, and slowly development in the western cities. The city areas have been divided into four classes. Xiamen is the only first class city, the second class cities include Quanzhou and Fuzhou, the third class cities consist of Sanming and Zhangzhou, and the fourth class cities comprise Longyan, Putian, Nanping and Ningde. The City Xiamen has the outstanding advantage, and the fourth class cities are obviously backward. The numbers of the first and second class cities are relative few, but the fourth class cities account for nearly half of the cities in whole province.