Study On The Tourism Destination Competitiveness Of Anhui Province

The competitiveness of travel destination is the key and core area of current research on the tourism industry. Foreign scholars began to introduce the concept of competitiveness into the field of tourism research from the late 1980s. Domestic scholars began to apply the theory of competitiveness to tourism research from the mid-1990s, In recent years, with the rapid development of tourism, tourism has become increasingly important in the economic development and affected more to the economic and social development. Therefore, the study of regional tourism destination competitiveness has also been widespread concerned in academia. As far as Anhui concerned, the research on Anhui tourism destination competitiveness is still in its infancy, which has not yet formed a good competitiveness evaluation index system. Based on the researches of many scholars, this paper starts from both realistic and potential competitiveness with 16 cities in Anhui province as the research object, combining features of tourism development in Anhui province. In order to build a tourism destination competitiveness evaluation index system, comparative analysis among competitiveness of tourism destination of 16 cities in Anhui is conducted. The paper reveals the status of competitiveness of 16 cities in Anhui systematically so as to propose targeted countermeasures and suggestions to promote overall tourism development of Anhui province and enhance the economic strength of the whole Anhui tourism.Firstly, This chapter describes the background of tourism destination competitiveness research and current development of the tourism industry in Anhui province and foreign countries and discusses the purpose and significance of this point. Overall, it introduces the research course as well as innovation. Secondly, it is the summary of thesis related basic theories such as the theory of competitive advantages and the comparable advantages. The paper also describes the theory of international competitiveness IMD model, Porter’s diamond model and concept model of CROUGH & RITCHIE. At the same time, it defines three core concepts of tourism destination, competitiveness and the competitiveness of tourism destination. Part three introduces the construction of evaluation index system, the sources of index data, targets interpretation and research methods of this paper. Part four illustrates systematically the data processing and results analysis of this thesis including the measurement and analysis of real competitiveness and potential competitiveness. Finally, a comprehensive comparative analysis among 16 tourist destinations of Anhui province is made to reveal the outcome. Part five summarizes the main conclusions drawn from the full text of this study to make a couple of suggestions and countermeasures to tourism destination competitiveness. Moreover, it notes the future research directions in the aspect of tourism destination competitiveness.The main conclusions of this study are shown as following four areas:From the main component of real competitive analysis results, the top five is Hefei, Chizhou, Huangshan, Wuhu and Ma’anshan, indicating that tourism of these cities develop well, occupying a dominant position among the 16 cities in Anhui. From the ranking of tourism competitiveness, the final five cities are Fuyang, Bozhou, Bengbu, Suzhou, Lu’an. These cities are influenced by the shortcoming of resources and location, which resulted in the current poor state of tourism development. From the main ingredient of potential competitiveness, the No.l is Hefei of which the score is far more than other cities. The score of Wuhu, Tongling, Huangshan and Ma’anshan are also over the average level, indicating that these five cities have a great growing space in the future in the aspect of tourism. Huaibei, Bozhou, Suzhou, Fuyang and Lu’an rank the bottom and below the average level in Anhui, indicating that these cities lack the power of sustainable development of tourism. In accordance with the existing development pattern, there is little potential can be explored and also lack stamina development. From the principal component of comprehensive competitiveness, Hefei, Huangshan, Wuhu, Chizhou, Ma’anshan, Anqing these six cities’ scores are above the average level, compared to which, the other 10 cities’ scores are all below the average level in the province. From the regional distribution of the overall space, the entire southern area of Anhui take advantage of tourism resources and the natural environment, which has a strong comprehensive competitiveness, while northern area of Anhui, restricted by its own conditions, occupy a disadvantage stage compared with southern area. Overall, from the regional distribution pattern, the situation can be described as strong southern weak northern. From the results of cluster analysis,16 cities of Anhui can be divided into four levels according to competitiveness of tourism destinations. The first level stands at a highly strong level in the aspect of competitiveness such as Hefei. The second level are cities with strong level of competitiveness like Huangshan. The third level are cities with a general level competitiveness like Ma’anshan, Chizhou, Anqing, Tongling and Wuhu. The fourth level are cities with a weak competitiveness including Bengbu, Lu’an, Huainan, Xuancheng, Huaibei, Bozhou, Chuzhou and Fuyang. Moreover, there is a imbalance in aspect of competitiveness of tourism destinations among southern area, middle area and northern area in Anhui, showing a trend of polarization development.Based on the above analysis, this paper puts forward some targeted recom mendations. First, for highly strong competitive city, Hefei, the future direction of development is heading to promoting the modernization of the city to enha nee the competitiveness of tourism destinations. Secondly, for cities with strong competitiveness like Huangshan, they must break through the limitations of ex isting models, focusing on solving the "bottleneck" of tourism development. Th en, for the general level cities, they are supposed to pay attention to the abilit y of economy in improving tourism economy, focusing on brand building of to urism industry when based on local tourism resources deeply. Finally, for those cities with weak competitiveness, the government must play an important role in macro-control to actively guide the development of tourism industry. Under the premise of scientific planning, they should attach importance to the produ cts differentiation and innovation of the development of tourism.