Abstract:Since 1990s, tourism competitiveness research has increasingly been paid attention to and it has captured the tourism research. Based on the related research literature available, this paper formulates a practical index system for evaluation of tourist destination competitiveness, which covers the following factors:tourist attractiveness, tourism capabilities and potentials. Based on index measure values obtained from scale table surveys and statistics, the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) system can diagnose and analyze competitiveness factors of a tourist destination for the formation of four quadrants based on the IPA measures. Finally, based on the survey of Yunnan tourism competitiveness factors, the strengths and weakness of Yunnan tourist destination are analyzed by means of Importance-Performance Analysis(IPA), and strategic measures are proposed to enhance its competitiveness. The core competitiveness factors of Yunnan as a tourist destination include natural resources, pleasant climate, ethnic folklores and customs, resources for conferences and exhibitions, national A level scenic spots, number of tourists, tourism revenues, and the ecological environment. Those factors need to be maintained. The low-importance and high-performance factors, such as traffic cost, public security, industrial management, tourism human resource and financial system, need to be maintained but are not the key factors. The increasing of the low-importance and low-performance factors, such as historical remains, tourism shopping, eating and recreation, travel agency, nature disaster, needs to be restrained. The high-importance and low-performance factors include hotel, tourism income, average expenditure and government investment. It is urgent for Yunnan tourism industry to improve the quality of its tourists so as to develop in an intensive approach; to change its tourism industry structure for its optimization and upgrading. The government should increase tourism investment to drive the social capital investment in tourism.