Research On Tourism Competitiveness Of Major Cities Along The Beijing-hangzhou Grand Canal

With the rapid development of the global economy, tourism, as a sunrise industry in the tertiary industry, has a much higher output and growth rate than other industries. Tourism, which is called the "smokeless industry" or the "green industry”, plays an significant role in easing local employment pressure, increasing government and household income, promoting regional economic development and enhance regional visibility. The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is the first cut, and longest canal in the world, which had played a role as an important north-south traffic artery from ancient times, connecting Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang provinces, acrossing the Haihe River, Yellow River, Huaihe River, Yangtze River and Qiantang River, with a total length of 1794 km. The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, together with the Great Wall of China, are called the two great world-renowned humanities projects. Loaded in the World Heritage List in 2014, The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal should make a difference in tourism development, but actually tourism development in the cities along it so far has not aroused sufficient attention. This paper selects 13 major cities along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal as samples and groups the evaluation factors of the urban tourism competitiveness into four categories: urban economic development level, strength of the tourism industry, environmental quality and service level. With the help of Principal Component Analysis, urban tourism competitiveness of these cities are compared and analyzed synthetically, and this paper divides them into four levels by applying cluster analysis as follows: highly competitive city, more competitive city, Medium competitive city and less competitive city. Finally this paper puts forward some advice about enhancing the urban tourism competitiveness.