Small And Medium-sized City Tourism Competitiveness Evaluation

There are many small and medium-size cities in China. Theenhancement of the tourism competitiveness of small and medium-sizedcities will promote China to be in an era of powerful tourism country.Through analyzing the relative theories of urban tourism and learningfrom the Diamond Model and "Bow-String-Arrow" Model, this article willbuild ten factors tourism competitiveness comprehensive evaluation modeland index system which be suitable for the developmentalcharacteristics of small and medium-sized cities in China. The expertevaluation method and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) will be used inthe quantitative analysis. In the measured value of the first grade indexsystem, the factors which affect the tourism competitiveness of small andmedium-sized cities in order are the competitiveness of the tourismproduction factor, the competitiveness of the tourism market, and thecompetitiveness of the tourism environment. In the measured value of thesecondary grade index system, tourism resource is the most influentialfactor, followed by the scale of tourism. And then human resourcemanagement, tourism enterprises, traffic and location, are at the samelevel, and are followed by the city’s tourism performance, economicenvironment, social environment and natural environment. In the measuredvalue of the third grade index system, the most important factorinfluencing on the tourism competitiveness of small and medium-sizedcities is the grade of tourism resources. Taking Chenzhou, Shaoguang, andGanzhou, which are on the edge of Hunan province, Guangdong Province, andJiangxi Province respectively, as the samples and evaluating the tourismcompetitiveness through the tourism competitiveness comprehensiveevaluation model, the result shows that Shaoguang is most competitive;Ganzhou comes second, and with Chenzhou at the last.Although thecomprehensive competitiveness of Chenzhou is weakest, thecompetitiveness of the tourism market, and the competitiveness of thetourism environment are in the middle of the three cities. And theelements of the competitive structure are relatively balanced. On thebasis of enhancing thecompetitiveness of structure, Chenzhou shouldenhance thecomprehensive competitiveness through focusing on build a citybrand——“a leisure city in the hill”, accelerating the constructionof high quality tourism brands, paying more attention on marketing,perfecting tourism service system, advancing human resources intourism and increasing regional cooperation, and so on.