A Study On Coastal Tourism Destination Competitiveness In Hainan

Worldwide beach tourism, fastest-growing sector in modern tourism industry, had its birth1970s. It set foot in China during late1980s. Since the beginning of the new millennium, the beach tourism industry has been enjoying a strong boom, becoming one of the major forces of China’s ocean economy. By2006, the industry was able to generate an annual income of470.6billion yuan, one of the highest figure among all countries. In2007, the value-added of the industry was324.2, which was19.9%higher than the year before. In2009, convinced by the strong development, the national State Council published the42nd document, intended to emphasize and further the economy of northern China bay area, especially its beach tourism industry. It was followed by the44th document, which proposes to provide resources to develop Hainan Island as an international tourism destination, thus marking the new era of China’s beach industry. The promises also come with problems, as the increasing supply may have overbalanced the market, the demand of which has been growing slowly in comparison. This further intensified the rivalry among beach tourism destinations, and thus makes it necessary to improve their competency.This essay makes use of existing literature resource, expert interviews, numerical&statistical methods, induction&comparison, etc., to examine Hainan Island’s beach tourism destinations. It does so by1) analyzing the current states of the destinations;2) introducing Michael Porter’s Competitive Advantage of Nations, Crouch&Ritchie’s model of destination competitiveness, and the competition system of beach destination as our theoretical bases;3) illustrating with chosen7destinations in Hainan, Zhejiang and Guangdong;4) using SPSS to perform factor analysis on Hainan beach destinations’ current, potential and environmental competitiveness, and tourists’ experience. The results show the following:For the current competitiveness, the major factors are market competition and that based on correlated firms; for potential competitiveness, they are resource and human capita; for environmental competitiveness, socio-cultural and legal environments. We evaluated tourists’ experience based on the scorings given to our target8provinces. Compared to the other7, Hainan rank4th in terms of tourists’ experience,8th in environmental competitiveness,7th in potential competitiveness, and8th in current competitiveness. Comprehensively it ranks7th in overall destination competitiveness. This shows that there is still considerable amount of room for Hainan beach destinations to improve and develop. Based upon the thorough analyses, our suggestions for Hainan tourism industry are:1) To update tourism products, and improve competitiveness by entering to international high-end market.2) To fully employ the beach resources and Hainan’s International Tourist Island brand-name, in order to actualize its potential competitiveness.3) To strengthen government leadership, and improve soft environments.4) To manage tourist issues actively, and encourage creative and individualized management method to improve tourists’ experience.